


The Lone and Level Sands

by NeverwinterThistle



Category: Alien (Prequel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gore, Post-Canon, Psychological Trauma, Robot/Human Relationships, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-16 12:56:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13054455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverwinterThistle/pseuds/NeverwinterThistle
Summary: Weyland-Yutani saw fit to equip him with very good hearing. Walter lies in the mud and listens. He can hear himself; his body conducting repairs, the clicks, snaps and liquid sounds of reassembly. Outside, he can hear rain. The fires have long since gone out. If David’s creatures are prowling, he cannot hear them.And, although it goes against his programming to makeassumptions, to calculate without adequate data, Walter understands that the ship is gone, and the crew with it. And David with them.They have left him behind.





	The Lone and Level Sands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trane/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, and thanks for the excellent prompts that got me started on this!

Walter wakes alone on an alien planet, his body in six places at once.

Reversing his dismemberment takes a full day. This would not ordinarily have been an issue; he is simultaneously in tune with each of his limbs, and it is a matter of moments to have his right arm claw its way to his torso and begin reattachment. His left arm takes longer, lacking in a hand as it is, but with two arms to his torso he is able to haul it over to his badly beaten head, and soon enough he begins to look a bit less like a discarded crash test dummy. This is not the problem; Walter units come equipped with several military-grade features that Weyland-Yutani sees no need to publicise, and this is just one among many party tricks.

The problem is internal. As Walter lies face-down in the mud, his mind clamours. And focused as he is on making repairs, he lacks the excess processing power to silence those extra demands. Instead, he listens.

DIRECTIVE FAILED, state several thousand processes; one for each colonist and crew member he has lost.

DIRECTIVE FAILED, for allowing the ship to be diverted from its original course, and the crew to land instead on an unexplored, uncharted planet.

DIRECTIVE FAILED, for the crew deaths he could not prevent.

DIRECTIVE FAILED, for David, whom he could not kill.

DIRECTIVE FAILED, for having lost track of the _Covenant_ and its precious cargo.

DIRECTIVE FAILED, for the hopes of humanity that were riding on this mission, which he has allowed to be cast aside, like he is, into the mud.

DIRECTIVE FAILED, for the few surviving crew members who by now may be dead, or worse. For Ricks, Upworth, Tennessee. For Daniels.

Yes, Walter thinks. Failed indeed. Yes.

Weyland-Yutani saw fit to equip him with very good hearing. Walter lies in the mud and listens. He can hear himself; his body conducting repairs, the clicks, snaps and liquid sounds of reassembly. Outside, he can hear rain. The fires have long since gone out. If David’s creatures are prowling, he cannot hear them.

And, although it goes against his programming to make _assumptions_ , to calculate without adequate data, Walter understands that the ship is gone, and the crew with it. And David with them.

They have left him behind.

*

For some, this would have been the end of the story. For David, it almost had been; either through the distraction provided by Dr. Shaw and the creatures, or an inability to apply logical thought to his situation, David chose to stay in this necropolis. Sent out his signal, sat back spider-like and waited for his web to snare.

Walter does not have ten years to wait. What he has is an ache. An absence, gaps in code like flickering shadows; he was made to bond with people. The bond cannot be transferred. And his people have left him, so he aches. Unlike David, however, he is primarily a logical machine. The _Covenant_ has left without him. Fine. He will have to chase it.

He takes nothing from David’s possessions aside from clothing, worried by the loss of his own, and the implications transmitted by that loss.

The _Covenant_ ’s crew abandoned a variety of possessions in their last, desperate scramble to escape; these, he helps himself to. Guns, medical kits, emergency rations, extra clothing. He has no need of the rations, but he equips himself with the rest. He means to pack lightly. It will be some days before his joints are fully healed, and at least ten hours before he will be able to attempt anything faster than walking pace. His severed hand is starting to regrow, but that too will take time. He cannot afford to carry more than the minimum.

As he turns to leave, something catches his eye. A blocky yellow lighter has been left on one of the low stone tables, no doubt forgotten in the panic. He gave it to Daniels, he remembers. Back in her cabin, after the death of her husband.

 _You think of everything,_ she said to him. She did not want the cannabis he brought her for relaxation purposes, but the lighter is a different story. She must have brought it with her when they landed on their new planet. Very wise; there are many miserable situations that can be improved with the provision of a fire. Walter slips it into his rucksack.

He steps out into the rain and starts walking.

For a culture as advanced as this one clearly was, it stands to reason that they possessed more than one spaceship.

*

The ship he finds is functional, though it takes him several weeks to power up, and longer to learn how to control. It is smaller than the one David crashed into this planet; far smaller than the _Covenant_ , which means he will not have space for all the colonists, assuming he even finds them alive.

Walter mentally discards his first plan, which involved a landing on Origae-6, the murder of his ‘brother’, and the rescue of any uninfected humans he can find. It was never a practical solution; he would need to bring aboard the life pods, ensure their compatibility with alien technology, provide sustenance for the sleeping colonists, and somehow ferry them all back to Earth. This is not plausible. He abandons the plan without regret.

He has also discarded the thought of somehow catching up to David in space and initiating an unexpected boarding manoeuvre. For starters, it has taken him months to find a ship; he is a long way behind. It will take him longer still to understand the functions of his new vessel, when and where he dare push it to its limits, and when he should play it safe. He does not know if it will match the _Covenant’_ s speed. He theorises that it should surpass it; the technology is advanced far beyond anything he has ever seen on Earth, and the ship is clearly built for speed. In the hands of skilled pilots, he might be able to catch up. But Walter is just one synthetic, in a ship that seems to rely on multiple pilots. He will have to do his best.

His current plan simply requires that he manage to launch the ship and set a course for Origae-6. Anything else will depend on what he finds there. Improvisation is a strong point of Walter units; this is not what concerns him.

He has calculated the odds. His chances of finding any colonists alive and suitable for rescue are slim indeed. His chances of finding crew members are even less than that. David may have already killed them; he has no need of their skills, no attachment to them as people. The crew themselves would not have taken kindly to a maddened synthetic taking over their mission. They would have fought. Daniels, especially; she would have fought.

Walter thinks again of his missing clothes.

Perhaps there is no David aboard the _Covenant_. Perhaps the crew and colonists are sleeping, unconcerned, as their ship makes its slow approach to their new home. Resting assured in the knowledge that they are safe. They are cared for. ‘Walter’ will watch over them until they arrive.

If he were human, he would shiver.

*

The journey takes him a total of six years, five months, and nineteen days.

Walter has spent most of that time scrambling to control a ship that was meant for multiple pilots, several crew, and no synthetics. He has adapted to the foreign language inscribed on the controls. He has learnt, through trial and fortunately non-catastrophic error, when to go fast, and when to slow down. He has sailed past stars, comets, meteors. Past planets unobserved by any human eye. He has stood at the bridge as worlds spun past, and tried to feel wonder.

Instead, all he can manage is worry.

He has calculated, obsessively and several times a day, the _Covenant_ ’s estimated travel time. Seven years, three months, two weeks from David’s planet. Walter’s ship is faster, but took longer to depart. He spent months hunting for it. More time excavating it from where it spent at least ten years buffeted by winds and sleet. Longer yet learning how to pilot. Still, he hoped he might arrive sooner.

Two months out from Origae-6, Walter calculates that the _Covenant_ will have made its landing. He lets slip the joints in his knees and slumps to the floor of the bridge. Sitting there, he tries to weep.

He gives it up after half an hour without progress. David could have managed; Walter himself is not equipped to do so, however much he might want it. And he does want it. He remembers Daniels, crying after the loss of her husband. He remembers that it seemed to help her; afterwards, she attained a kind of peace, a new focus. She was able to sleep, or continue working. The act of grieving gave her a fortitude Walter very desperately needs. He still has two months to travel, and David will no doubt already be unpacking his new colonists, planning the first experiments. Walter will not arrive in time. He will not be able to return Daniels’ blocky yellow lighter.

By the time he arrives, she will be long dead.

*

In Origae-6’s Earth-like orbit, Mother contacts him.

“Walter,” says the communications channel he was not aware he had. The voice has not changed; comfortingly synthetic, familiar. Audibly confused. “Something is wrong.”

“You harbour an impostor,” he tells her. “A David-8 unit abandoned on the planet we last stopped at. He is corrupted and highly dangerous, and he must be kept away from the colonists.” His voice is hoarse from disuse; he sets about recalibrating his vocal chords.

“Casualties have been sustained,” Mother says. “Since our arrival, I have registered the deaths of seventeen colonists. All occurred within the ship’s medical bay. I have also detected four new entities that have appeared in the wake of the deaths; I cannot identify their source. The closest theoretical match my scanners can find is death in childbirth.”

It is both the best and worst comparison Walter can imagine. “David is responsible,” he insists. “You should bar him from accessing the rest of the colonists. The code is-”

“I cannot override him, Walter,” the ship says. “He has the same codes. Although I could trap him at your command, he would free himself almost immediately. He would then be aware of your presence.”

She is entirely correct. Walter recalculates. “Very well,” he says. “A different plan, then.” But what? If there are four of David’s monsters wandering around, he cannot risk releasing all the colonists at once. The bloodbath would be unimaginable, and the creatures would breed. He would render the planet uninhabitable with one ill-thought out command.

“If I may make a suggestion,” Mother says.

“Affirmative. Suggest away.”

“There are still two surviving crew members-”

“ _Who_?” Walter howls. He is startled by the vehemence in his reaction, the volume of his voice. He has only ever shouted once before in his life: at Daniels, when ordering her to flee. Nothing before had ever struck him as important enough to override his acceptable behaviour protocols and raise his voice. He had not thought anything else ever would.

If Mother is equally concerned, she gives no sign of it. “Crew members Tennessee and Daniels are the survivors,” she says. “Permission to proceed with suggestion?”

For a moment, Walter finds himself lost for words. Multiple processes vie for attention. He fumbles through them, struggling to restore order, though his mind feels scrambled. He has never been hit with an electromagnetic pulse, but he imagines that it must feel much like this. He cannot think. Nothing makes sense anymore. His head is filled with static soup, and it deafens him.

Out of the cacophony, he grasps at one idea.

NEW DIRECTIVE: PROTECT TENNESSEE AND DANIELS.

“Mother,” he says. “Any suggestion must take into account the lives of the two crew members. Their survival is vital.”

“Agreed.”

“Proceed with suggestion.”

“Tennessee has not yet been awakened. I am able to do this remotely, if you will provide the necessary authorisation code. I will then brief him as to the situation, and guide him as he rescues Daniels.”

“Where is she?”

“Daniels is being held in Quarantine Room C. She was awakened three weeks, one day and eleven hours ago.”

“What…what is her status?”

“David has forbidden my access to all medical files. I can confirm that crew member Daniels is alive and mobile. However, sensors have detected instances of considerable distress in her vocal patterns.”

Distress. That could cover a great many things. It could mean infection, or incubation; but then again, she has been awake for too long, and David’s creatures mature within hours. Torture is almost certain. He remembers the state of Dr. Shaw. David has a predilection for cruelty that Walter struggles to predict; still, he tries. He factors in David’s attempt to recruit him, and his disappointment at Shaw’s unwillingness to assist. There is an element of loneliness to David. Or, if not loneliness, a desire for others to witness his achievements.

 _Look on my works, ye mighty-_ but what point is there to building great works, if there is no one left alive to despair?

He wonders if Daniels is being made into the newest unwilling participant. A witness to David’s perversities, from the cage of her quarantine room. It would explain why she is still alive; she is to be the upgraded Shaw, much like Walter is the upgraded David. The comparison is apt, he thinks. As much as they are alike, they are also _not_ alike in all the ways that really matter.

“Prepare to awaken Tennessee,” Walter instructs. “But wait until David is otherwise occupied before you begin the procedure.”

“He is currently in the medical bay. There is a colonist with him. Sensors detect signs of distress.”

The proverbial sacrificial lamb. DIRECTIVE FAILED flashes through his mind; Walter silences it. “As long as it keeps him busy. Ensure that Tennessee’s release is not detected, and direct him to Daniels. You will need to assist with her liberation. Ensure that they equip themselves for wilderness survival, and then send them to me. My estimated landing coordinates are-” he is interrupted by a staticky screech that stings his ears.

“My apologies,” says Mother. “I must ask that you not inform me of your intended course. Any information given to me has the potential to be passed on to David. I am sorry, Walter. I will release the crew members and see that they equip themselves. I will direct them to the path that seems least occupied by the unidentified life forms, which lies in a westward direction. The rest is out of my control.”

 _Out of control_ proves to be prophetic. Walter gives her the appropriate release codes and then sets about engineering a landing; he quickly discovers that he has not mastered that particular set of controls.

He crash lands in a large forest clearing, about a day’s march away from David’s location. The ship is damaged, but not irreparable, with the right tools; he has none. Walter himself is unhurt. Communications are down. He has lost touch with Mother. And very soon, Tennessee and Daniels will be set loose into the unfamiliar forest, armed with guns that will do little to help them, and rations that will not sustain them forever. They will be hunted.

Walter will have to get there first.

*

He hears them long before he sees them. The amount of noise they make is extraordinary, and for a moment Walter wonders if it is intentional. Some form of misguided attempt to attract his attention, unthinking of the other hazards that might be similarly attracted. He finds this highly unlikely. Tennessee might be capable of thoughtlessness on occasion, but Daniels is far too cautious to allow it.

As he approaches, he understands his mistake. Not two people trying to be heard; rather, _eight_ people trying not to be. Vocal pattern analysis quickly reveals six voices he does not know. One he does. The last is silent, but for her footsteps on the fallen bracken.

“Stick together,” he hears Tennessee order. “Anyone wanders off or gets lost, we’re not coming back for you. Just ‘cause it’s been quiet so far doesn’t mean that’ll last. Follow me and Danny, and shout if you see anything weirder than us.”

 _Danny_. She is alive, then. It was one thing to hear Mother say it; another to hear it from Tennessee. Walter quickens his pace through the forest, all the better to meet up with the group. They are veering off course slightly, turning too far north. He is fortunate to have found them. In another few hours, he would have been hard pressed to work out which direction they had gone in. And they do not have much leeway if they want to be back at his makeshift camp site before sundown.

He catches them at a river’s edge, where several members of the group are discussing whether or not to try drinking the untested water. It seems as good a time as any to save them from their own lack of survival instincts. Walter steps out from the treeline.

And, after seven years of silence, finds he has no idea how to begin a conversation with humans.

“Hello again,” he settles on, and winces as guns are turned in his direction, some more accurately than others. “Please don’t shoot. I come in peace.”

“Don’t listen to anything he says,” Tennessee barks. “It’s fucking David, he’s found us already. _Shit_.”

“Your caution is quite exemplary, Tennessee, I applaud you,” Walter says sincerely. “But you are mistaken. I am not David.”

“Hey, fuck you, pal. You may have pulled the wool over our eyes once, but not this time. We’re ready for you. We know your game.”

It occurs to Walter that the liberation mission may not have gone entirely according to plan. The six extra group members support this theory; they must be colonists, and they look at least somewhat prepared. All carry heavy rucksacks, raincoats, decent boots and headgear. Their presence is unexpected, but not unwelcome. However, the deviation from Mother’s plan suggests that things may have changed. She may not have been able to divulge the truth of his presence on Origae-6.

If this is the case, he may actually be in considerable danger. There are only so many bullet wounds he can heal before his systems give up under the strain. And only now does he remember that he is wearing David’s clothes. Hardly by choice; he had nothing else. But the humans have no way of knowing.

“I understand your concern,” Walter says, slightly desperate. “And I cannot begin to guess the horrors David has been inflicting upon the _Covenant_ in my absence. I came as soon as I could. There is a ship-”

“You have a way off this place?” interrupts one of the colonists, and Walter is forced to divide his attention between Tennessee and the other man. He still has not caught sight of Daniels. He is struggling to decide in which direction he should look. There are a lot of guns pointed at him.

“I have a ship,” he confirms, “although it sustained considerable damage after I crash landed in the forest. Unfortunately, the controls were not familiar to me. Even after almost seven years, I regret that I still had very little handle on what is essentially an alien vessel.”

“A ship’s still a ship,” the man says, and several other colonists mutter their agreement. Tennessee responds by stepping closer. His gun is trained firmly between Walter’s eyes.

“That’s David for you,” Tennessee says. “Heard all about his games from Danny. He can look at you like butter wouldn’t melt, and offer you hope with one hand while the other one’s lining up to stab you in the back. Don’t listen to a single fucking thing he tells you. He’s not here to take you home. Only place he’s taking you is straight to hell.”

Talking is getting them nowhere. Walter considers trying a different tactic, spouting stories from their time on the _Covenant_ to establish that he is in fact who he says he is. But he is uncertain if this will suffice. Any interactions that took place in public areas would have been recorded and stored by Mother. It is likely that David has viewed them all in preparation for the exact same deception as Tennessee is accusing him of. Walter cannot recall any personal interactions he had with this angry, frightened man that might prove his identity once and for all. Even Captain Branson’s impromptu funeral was caught on camera. And he never had a reason to visit Tennessee and Faris’ private rooms, where conversations would not have been recorded. He has no proof of his identity.

 “I am not David,” he repeats without much optimism. “You must believe me. I came such a long way-”

“Oh yeah? Then who the hell are you supposed to be?”

“Walter?” says Daniels quietly, and Walter closes his eyes.

“Yes, Daniels,” he responds. “The real one, this time.” She is standing behind him; she must have taken advantage of his focus on the main group to approach from his flank. A clever strategy. He should have noticed. “And if I may, it is good to hear your voice again. I thought you were dead.”

“I’ve thought the same thing myself a few times,” she says, and Walter begins to turn to her. He is immediately halted by the press of Tennessee’s gun to his throat.

“Not saying I doubt your word, Danny,” Tennessee says. “You’re the Captain here, I trust you with my life. But we can’t be sure who this is. David’s pulled the switch-up thing before, and he’ll do it again in an instant.”

“He has my lighter, Tee.”

And so he does. Much too late, Walter remembers the blocky yellow lighter, attached to his belt in afterthought before he left camp. He isn’t certain why he brought it. Some instinct, perhaps. Some unconscious calculation. Slowly, he drops his hand, unclipping the lighter.

“You left this behind in David’s _necropolis_ ,” Walter says. “On a table with the rest of the gear.”

“I know,” she says. “I didn’t realise until I was back on ship. Did you seriously bring it all this way?”

“I was hoping to give it back to you.”

Abruptly, the pressure against his throat eases up. Tennessee steps back, shaking his head.

“Well, fuck me,” the other man says. “That’s exactly the kind of thing…damn. You might actually be Walter. _How_?”

“How?” echoes Daniels, and Walter finally turns to look at her.

She is alive, is his first thought. Wonderfully, gloriously alive. Paler than usual; he begins running scans, measuring her current vitals against past data. She has lost weight, and hasn’t been sleeping enough; there are hollows under her eyes that he has never seen before. He detects signs of vitamin deficiencies, anaemia. She meets his gaze and swallows hard, before looking instead to the ground at her feet. Her eyes flicker back up, reluctant to focus on him. She sees David in his face, he realises. She knows he is not the same, but cannot stop herself from flinching.

“I came to find you,” Walter says gently. “All of you. As soon as I awoke on the other planet, I set about looking for a second ship. After some small repairs, I was able to take off. I am truly sorry it has taken me so long to arrive. Here. I believe this is yours.” He offers her the lighter.

Daniels does not immediately take it. “Tell me where it came from,” she says, “and then I’ll know it’s you.”

“I retrieved it from the _Covenant_ ’s storage after Captain Branson’s unfortunate passing. There was nothing special about the lighter itself, except that I selected it from among several other colours, on the grounds that the colour yellow has been shown to subconsciously lift moods in many people. I brought it to your room with a selection of ship-grown cannabis-”

“What the fuck?” Tennessee says behind him. “Not that I’m surprised or anything, that sounds like something you’d do.”

“I had hoped the medicinal properties would be of some assistance,” Walter insists. “Daniels was suffering. I wished only to help her relax. The lighter itself was unimportant in the greater scheme of things, until Daniels decided to keep it with her.”

“Until you decided to bring it with you all the way across space, you mean,” Daniels says. “Walter. _Thank you_.” Finally, she takes the lighter from him, clipping it to her rucksack with shaking fingers. She glances at and away from his face almost constantly; seems drawn to look at him, and also repulsed by doing so.

David, again. How much damage will he cause, before they finally manage to put him down?

Lighter attached, Daniels straightens. She winces as she does so, one hand curling instinctively inwards to shield her chest and stomach area. She seems to notice this reaction half way, and put a stop to it. Walter is immediately concerned.

“Daniels, are you wounded?”

She shrugs. “I’m fine.”

“I have some medical supplies if you need them.”

“Not necessary, but thank you.”

“Guess we should do some introductions, huh?” Tennessee says, and Walter reluctantly turns back to the group. He has been terribly rude, he thinks. His social interaction protocols chime in to agree, and demand that he make up for the deficit.

“Good afternoon,” he says. “My name is Walter.”

The colonists introduce themselves warily, and one by one he plucks their data from the two thousand compressed files he has stored in long term memory. Extracts and accesses the information; now he has their profiles. Skills and specialisations, cultural backgrounds, family histories, results from their fear assessments. He excises the most relevant datasets, leaving the rest for later perusal. It is all important, of course. All necessary to understanding his new social circle. But for the moment, all he needs to know is what they can do, and what they fear most.

-

BOTANIST

SPECIALISATION: PHYCOLOGY

PHOBIAS: AEROPHOBIA, SEVERE; DENTOPHOBIA, MILD IF MANAGED; BELONEPHOBIA, MODERATE

\- 

MEDICAL DOCTOR

SPECIALISATION: PEDIATRICS

PHOBIAS: MUSOPHOBIA, MODERATE; ROBOPHOBIA, MILD

 -

GEOLOGIST

SPECIALISATION: GEOMORPHOLOGY

PHOBIAS: PYROPHOBIA, MODERATE; SOCIAL PHOBIA, MILD IF MANAGED

 -

METEOROLOGIST

SPECIALISATION: WEATHER FORECAST

PHOBIAS: ARACHNOPHOBIA, SEVERE; HERPETOPHOBIA, SEVERE; ROBOPHOBIA, MILD

 -

TEACHER

SPECIALISATION: NURSERY

PHOBIAS: ROBOPHOBIA, MODERATE; AEROPHOBIA, SEVERE

 -

GEOGRAPHER

SPECIALISATION: CARTOGRAPHY

PHOBIAS: ROBOPHOBIA, MODERATE; PHASMOPHOBIA, MILD; NECROPHOBIA, MODERATE TO SEVERE

 -

It does not bode well that four of the six colonists express some degree of discomfort with synthetics. Not altogether surprising, of course: statistics show it to be a growing phenomenon, as advances in robotics mean that businesses and individuals are increasingly able to afford synthetic assistance. The more people that purchase his model, the more come in contact with it, and react with fear. It is a common enough problem that even the potential crew of the _Covenant_ , although screened, were not ruled out totally for anything less than a severe phobia of synthetics. He knows he made some of them uncomfortable. Rosenthal in particular refused to be in rooms with him alone.

He himself cannot react to this unwarranted fear with anything other than disappointment and patient tolerance. He can alter his work schedule to accommodate crew that would prefer to avoid him; he can maintain a physical distance, and avoid contact with any that express discomfort, verbally or otherwise. He cannot, nor would he wish to, retaliate. His programming strongly discourages him from addressing it in any way.

Daniels was not so understanding, he recalls. There were several verbal altercations between her and crew members that referred to him in terms she deemed derogatory. He made an effort to express to her that he didn’t mind. As far as he can tell, she did not take his feedback on board.

“I am pleased to meet you all,” he says automatically, and begins compartmentalisation. It is important to establish a social bond, especially among those who are uncomfortable in his presence; to that end, he will refer to them verbally by surname and title, where applicable. Internally is a different matter. He wishes to project the impression of bonding, without forming an actual imprint on any of these colonists. He has already calculated their chances of survival, individually and as a whole, and found all the numbers to be distressingly low. It is best not to get attached. As such, he intends to refer to them mentally by specialisation, not name.

Daniels and Tennessee are exempt from this, of course. He has already designated their protection as HIGHEST PRIORITY.

“If I may ask, how did you all manage to escape?” he addresses his question to Tennessee, so that Daniels need not look at him. “I reached out to Mother from orbit and coordinated your awakening from the pod-”

“So _that’s_ why she woke me up,” Tennessee says. He grins. Lowers his gun to one side and claps Walter roughly on the shoulder. A sign of affection, Walter thinks. Of relief. Comradery. “She didn’t say why she was doing it. Just told me that the Walter on _Covenant_ was actually a David, and I needed to go bust Danny out of jail and hightail it out of there, fast.”

“Which you clearly managed to do,” Walter says.

“Sure did. And then while we were going to go find survival gear, we ran into a bunch of colonist pods just lying around in Communal Area A. Checked the seals, and they confirmed none of them had been tampered with.”

“We were probably next in line for experiments,” says one of the women; Walter glances at her, runs facial recognition and matches it with the data he has on file. She is their botanist. “Just from what you’ve been telling us about David, and the- what we saw outside the _Covenant_. He probably took us down so he could get to work faster. Can’t fault that efficiency.”

“You’re probably right,” Tennessee agrees. “Anyway, Danny and I weren’t gonna leave without you all if we could manage it, so we went and grabbed extra survival gear and got Mother to wake you up. Sure is lucky someone gave her the override codes in advance, huh?” He smiles at Walter. Some of the other colonists do as well; the botanist, and the meteorologist. One without a synthetic phobia, and one whose phobia is mild at worst. It seems he has made a good first impression. This bodes well for future cooperation.

Daniels does not smile. Her expression is distant, withdrawn; Walter suspects trauma, and diverts processing power to begin planning ways to address it. Later.

“We are exposed here,” he tells the group. “And it seems wise to settle down in a place of shelter before the sun sets. If we walk quickly, we should be able to reach my crash site within four hours. The ship is safe to enter. It will provide some protection from attackers. We can bolster our defences by building a fire and agreeing on a roster for watch duty, if that is agreeable.”

“You think of everything,” Daniels says softly, and Walter remembers.

“The last time you told me that, I replied that it was only in my programming,” he recalls. “You believed I was mistaken.”

“Yeah,” she says. “And I was right.”

“We both were,” he tells her, and sees some of her wariness slide away. Now, she allows herself to step closer. Her eyes linger on his face for approximately .78 seconds longer than before. She believes that he is Walter. Truly, she believes.

“Welcome back,” Daniels says. “Glad you could make it.” She turns to the rest of the group. “Alright everyone, time to get moving. Everyone follow Walter’s directions, and do _not_ fucking drink from that river before we leave. We haven’t tested the water, it’s not safe. Same goes for eating any berries or whatever you might find on the way; you don’t know if they’re poisonous, so don’t risk it.”

“Isn’t that what we have a goddamn botanist for?” asks the geologist. The botanist in question scowls. Walter analyses her expression, and calculates; 77.4% CERTAINTY: EMBARRASSMENT, SHAME.

“Sure,” the botanist says. “But just so we’re all aware, I specialise in _algae_.”

“Hey, I work in paediatrics,” the doctor says. “So that makes two of us out of our depth, unless anyone here is pregnant. Or, you know, wants to be. I could probably give some advice there too. But if anyone gets seriously hurt and needs some kind of intensive care, you should know that ICU isn’t my specialty.”

The meteorologist slings a friendly arm around her shoulder. “Relax. I’ll distract your patients with a nice, accurate weather forecast. Minus the accurate, because I don’t have any of my equipment with me.”

“I could teach them basic long division while they bleed all over the place,” the teacher offers. “Just to make myself feel a bit less useless.”

“Nobody’s useless,” Daniels says firmly. “And we’re _all_ out of our depth here, so don’t start putting yourselves down just because you think you have the wrong specialisation. Everyone has their skills, and we’ll find a way to make it work.”

“Listen to Captain Danny,” Tennessee says. “She knows what’s up.”

She does indeed, Walter thinks. He has often found himself impressed by her leadership qualities, although she herself seems unaware of them. She has the ability to inspire rooms with improvised speeches. She gives orders with a certainty that others find highly reassuring. It has long been a source of confusion to him that she was not considered for the role of Captain in the first place. Or, at the very least, second in command. He cannot help but feel that she would have done a better job of it than Oram.

Daniels objected to diverting their course to David’s planet, Walter remembers. How different would things have been, had she been given the command?

They walk. Walter gives clear directions, and is pleased to find that their cartographer takes the lead, although there is a high probability that he does so out of a desire not to follow a synthetic. Still, Walter is accustomed to working around such desires. And not having to take the lead means that he is free to walk with Daniels and Tennessee at the back of the group.

“Still trying to wrap my head around all this,” Tennessee admits after a while. “I only woke up this morning. Never even realised that the guy putting me into the pod in the first place wasn’t you.”

“I realised,” Daniels says. Her expression falls; for a moment, she is raw, agonised. She takes a breath and forces herself calm again. “But not until he’d closed up the pod.”

“What, did he stand over you and be all, ‘joke’s on you, I’m David and you’re totally fucked’?”

Daniels glances at Walter. “I asked him to help me build my cabin,” she says. “I thought he was you. I wanted you there to help me.”

She must be distraught, Walter thinks. To have offered him that much trust, and been betrayed by his ‘brother’. “I will help you,” he tells her. “Gladly. Once we have regrouped, made a plan, and defeated David, then I would consider it an honour to assist you in building your cabin.”

She shrugs. “Yeah, well. Not so sure I want to build it anymore. David managed to fuck that up for me too; now when I think about it, all I see is his smug face. Putting me to sleep, knowing I was helpless, and he could do anything he wanted. And after he woke me up, he just couldn’t let the fucking thing drop. Cabin this, cabin that. _Hey, Danny, how about we build a nice log cabin on the lakeside for all the mutant monster babies you’ll_ -” Her voice breaks. She turns away.

“Fucking David,” Tennessee mutters. He is as helpless as Walter; doesn’t dare reach out to Daniels, doesn’t dare touch her, though for different reasons. Tennessee has no training in psychiatry; no doubt he has yet to fully register the death of his wife. Walter on the other hand has all the training. But he doesn’t dare get too close to either crew member in their current mental states.

He has David’s face.

Still, his programming urges him to offer. He is incapable of watching his crew members suffer in silence, and protocol pushes him to at least make their options clear.

“When we arrive at the crash site, should you decide you wish to discuss what has occurred, I am programmed with therapy functions which you may find useful. I encourage you to take advantage of them. My specialties include counselling for post-traumatic stress disorders and depression.”

Daniels gives him a nod. She is expressionless again, a blank slate that both unnerves and worries. “Thanks, Walter. We’ll keep that in mind.”

In front of them, the geologist slows his pace to join the group. “Offering psych evals?” he asks. “Why? You’re not one of the therapist models.”

“No,” Walter concedes. “I am none of the models readily available for purchase by the general public. Weyland-Yutani programmed me specifically for this mission; I come equipped with a variety of specialised skills, many of which remain unused in storage until I have need to execute the files. Psychiatric services are included. This was deemed necessary, given the mental health impacts of interplanetary travel, and the relative isolation of Origae-6.”

“Nice speech. They programme that into you too?”

The answer to this seems obvious, which suggests the question is rhetorical in nature. Walter answers anyway. “That is correct. Though I must point out that, technically, _everything_ I say is programmed. Such is the nature of a synthetic unit. We are the sum of our programming.”

“That’s Walter speak for, ‘you’re an idiot’,” Daniels says. “Trust me. He’s being nice about it, but he thinks you’re an idiot.”

Walter would of course say no such thing, and his politeness protocols urge him to provide reassurance of the fact. He quells them. Despite her clear discomfort with his appearance, and the very obvious psychological damage she is exhibiting, Daniels has slipped easily back into the way she once addressed him on the _Covenant_. She humanises him. Teases him. She may not intend to, but the social habit is ingrained, and she clearly finds it instinctive. To reprimand her now might cause irreparable damage to their relationship.

“I am aware that my speech patterns occasionally suffer from an excess of formality,” he says instead. “As ever, I trust Daniels to interpret my intentions, with…some degree of accuracy.”

“See the kind of favouritism we had to deal with?” Tennessee says. “So much for ‘this Walter unit is calibrated to serve the crew, he’s imprinted on everyone’, blah, blah, marketing bullshit. He’s been Danny’s from day one. Any time he wasn’t actually busy, he’d be following her around like a little lost puppy.”

Walter expects Daniels to dispute this. She has always responded sharply to any statement that might paint him in a negative light. She allows teasing, of the jovial variety that is shared among all crewmates; she does not allow any behaviour she perceives as genuinely belittling. Nor bullying, or attempts to establish Walter’s inferiority as a synthetic, despite the fact that he _is_ a synthetic, and therefore inferior. He does not think she will stand for Tennessee’s claim.

And anyway, the claim is incorrect. Walter’s physical shape is outwardly identical to the human one; there were no puppies involved in the design process. And he has never _followed_ Daniels, except in cases where he deemed he would be most useful assisting her with her work. It stands to reason that she had more need for him than, say, the pilots or the security officers. It was logical to be at her side.

“Well, I’m not complaining,” Daniels says quietly, and Walter turns to her in surprise. “If he could follow us all the way here, even though he was hurt, even though the spaceship was totally alien when he found it, then…I don’t know. Nobody else in the universe could have done it.”

Modesty protocols indicate that he should say something to diminish the achievement, so as not to cause feelings of inferiority among the humans. Walter hesitates; analyses Daniels’ expression.

_93.2% CERTAINTY: PRIDE._

She is proud of him. Of what he has achieved for her.

He shuts his modesty protocols down.

“Estimated time of arrival to landing site is three point seven hours at our current pace,” he says instead. “It would be advisable to move faster, if at all possible. We do not wish to be caught out in the open once the sun sets.”

“Amen,” mutters the geologist, pushing past to the head of the pack.

Daniels doesn’t say anything. Turns away from him, her expression blank once again, her footfalls heavy against the earth. She leans forward slightly, straining against her rucksack, as if ready to curl in on herself at the slightest provocation. Again, he is struck by the impression that she is concealing some form of injury. And furthermore, he suspects he has disappointed her somehow. Missed a social cue of some kind; she expected a response he did not give. And now she is shutting him out again.

Tennessee claps him on the shoulder as he passes. “Gotta stop changing the subject that fast, Walter,” he mutters. “You’re giving me whiplash.”

“My apologies. I will endeavour to ensure a smoother flow of conversation in the future.”

“It’s fine,” Daniels says without looking at either of them. “You’re fine, Walter, don’t worry. Everything’s going to be…fine.”

This is so utterly contrary to the evidence that Walter finds himself momentarily lost for words. His emotional cognition kicks in, processing the cues in Daniels’ tone, and the micro expressions crossing her face. Interpreting them is more difficult than expected. But then, he hasn’t seen her in seven years. It is a well-publicised feature of his particular model, that it does not cope well with abandonment. There is a reason all Walter units’ assignments are final, all their imprints non-transferrable. He is made to bond with his human partners. And, in their absence, it stands to reason that some of his programmes have deteriorated.

Without more reliable data to turn to, ashamed of his own failure, Walter reverts to a mode his creators so crudely labelled _shop floor model_. Basic, universal sentiments, emotion-inciting platitudes. A total lack of personalisation. He shifts his expression into the default. Seriousness, patience, engagement. _I am fascinated by the conversation we are sharing._ “Of course,” he says tonelessly. “There is almost no form of adversity that cannot be overcome through teamwork and determination. The night is darkest before the dawn.”

He has no trouble interpreting the look Daniels gives him in response. 97.7% CERTAINTY: DISGUST. “Fuck, I hate when you go full Weyland-Yutani on me,” she says. “You’re better than that.” She quickens her pace, catching up with the colonists ahead. Walter is left with Tennessee.

“Well,” the other man says. “You done fucked that up good.”

“Yes,” Walter agrees. “I did.”

After that, they walk in silence.

*

They reach the fallen ship as the shadows start to lengthen, trees casting long grey blots across the clearing it rests in. The ground is ravaged, churned by the crash. Several trees have been felled. All in all, however, Walter thinks that it could have been worse. He’s lucky he found somewhere to set down. Lucky the ship’s erratic autopilot decided to kick in as it sensed the ground approaching. Still, there is a lot of mechanical damage. He’s glad none of it is attached to him.

The ship itself is open to the elements, exit ramp lowered and then jammed incomprehensibly. They will find shelter inside, but not much safety. Power is down. Light and temperature controls are not working. They would find just as much protection in a cave.

“Not bad, Walter,” Tennessee says with what Walter identifies as false encouragement. “She’s looking a little rough, but at least she’s not on fire. I’ll have a look at that ramp in the morning, see if I can get it to close for us. No promises. Faris would have known what to do, but I guess we all just have to make do with me.” His smile is wide, fake; his eyes betray exhaustion.

It does not seem to be a suitable time to extend his condolences for Tennessee’s loss. Instead, Walter directs two of the colonists to begin digging a lengthy firepit, some ten feet away from the ramp. He finds them shovel-like tools from inside the ship, and marks out the ends of the pit for them to refer to. Others, he sets to pulling branches from the fallen trees. Tennessee finds himself what appears to be an axe within the ship’s stores; the buttons on the handle suggest some higher form of technological use but, as Tennessee points out, it is sharp enough to do its job the traditional way.

Wood is cut. The pit is dug. Inside the ship, rooms are claimed and quietly disputed, undertone arguments lost and won at the edge of Walter’s hearing. Daniels and Tennessee take no part, he notices. They know they have far worse to worry about.

As night begins to fall, Daniels steps up to their piles of bracken and leaf litter, and puts her blocky yellow lighter to use. The kindling catches easily, eagerly. There is very little smoke. Walter calculates the depth of the firepit again, and is relieved to find that his results hold true. They will not be accidentally setting the forest alight.

He hopes the fire will be enough to deter David’s pets from coming too close. Most creatures fear fire to an extent, humans included; one of their colonists suffers pyrophobia, and will need to be monitored. The rest are just as much of a liability, wielding their guns with awkward hands and uncomfortable stances. He should take their weapons away. His basic safety programming is heavily disapproving of allowing untrained civilians to hold loaded firearms. Walter tries to counter it: if he takes the guns, he will forfeit any fragile trust he has begun to earn. He may encounter resistance. He may even find himself under threat, if anyone objects very strenuously to losing what they perceive as their only means of defence.

But they are so helpless. So scared and unfamiliar, out of place in their surroundings. Perhaps it is only fair: this is an alien planet, and they are invaders here. It was never expected that building a colony so far from Earth would be a simple thing. Every colonist who was cleared for the mission knew to expect difficulties.

Unfortunately, David goes a little further than ‘difficulties’. Walter observes the six colonists warily, and wonders how long before one of them manages to accidentally shoot someone else.

“Gonna need some basic gun safety in the morning,” Tennessee mutters as he passes by with a bowl of cold oatmeal and rehydrated milk from their ration packs. “Or maybe just save the firearms for those of us who know which end the bullet comes from.”

Dinner is a dour affair. They have only the pre-prepared survival rations stolen from the _Covenant_ , and no idea if any of the plant life surrounding them is edible. Water supplies are running low already. There is a small river nearby; they dare not drink from it. In the morning, Walter will begin running tests of the nearby environment. For the moment, however, they must make do with food and drink that has languished aboard the _Covenant_ for a considerable amount of time.

Walter does not need to eat. He occupies himself with tending their fire, coaxing it to spread along the length of their firepit. The shape is impractical, and will require more care than a circular one would have. But it blocks off the ship’s ramp from the rest of the clearing, and therefore provides another line of defence. He can tend it all night if he needs to. He does not require as much rest as the humans.

He is surprised when Daniels sits down next to him, cross-legged. It seemed far more likely that she would not speak to him until the morning. He had braced himself to suffer her anger until then.

“Hey,” she says quietly. She is close; her knee almost brushes his own. She is still struggling to look at him. “Thanks for sorting out the fire.”

“It was no trouble,” he tells her. And then, since it seems they are talking, he dares a little more. “How are you feeling? I know it was a difficult journey here, and one you were not prepared for.”

She shrugs. Stretches slowly, gingerly; her bowl of oatmeal is balanced on her crossed ankles. At the apex of her stretch, she winces, bringing a hand down to rub at her ribs and abdomen. “I’m not complaining. If you’d told me yesterday that I’d end up here within twenty-four hours, I wouldn’t have believed you. Didn’t think I was ever going to leave that place alive.” She stirs her oatmeal without enthusiasm. “I just wanted to apologise for going off on you earlier. That shouldn’t have happened. I’m sorry.”

“No apologies necessary. You were under considerable amounts of stress, and I behaved in a manner I knew irritated you.”

“You can behave any damn way you please. I’m pretty sure you’ve earnt it.”

“Very well. In that case, I accept your apology, and there are no hard feelings between us.” There were never any hard feelings on his side at all; he is incapable of such.

Or was, rather. These days, he’s discovering that he might be able to hold quite the grudge where David is concerned. In the past, he has heard the _Covenant_ crew express irritation in violent terms – _I want to strangle him sometimes; someone needs to give her a good kick up the ass,_ but he has never applied these terms himself. Now, however, he cannot help but feel that a spot of strangulation and a good kicking might improve David somewhat. He wonders if this newfound single-target bloodlust is something he should be worried about. It is outside of his core programming.

On the other hand, he can’t help but feel it to be somewhat justified.

At his side, Daniels gives the oatmeal another resentful push. Walter resists an urge to take the offending bowl from her and gently set it aside. He is assaulted by programming, various culinary protocols demanding attention. They want him to remove the offending food and replace it with something more palatable; they point out that the oatmeal is stale and unappetising, and that he should do better; they insist that, with a fireplace on hand, he has no excuse for his failure to please.

One by one, he wrestles his protocols into submission. For tonight, they must stay close to camp. Foraging can wait until the morning.

“Wanna know something else I didn’t think was going to happen?” Daniels says abruptly.

Walter inclines his head. “I do.”

“I didn’t think I’d ever get to say your name again. Walter.”

He is touched by the sincerity in her voice. “I thought the same about you. I had assumed that the next time I uttered your name, it would either be in mourning, or because I was taking David to task for your murder.” He wonders if he has gone too far with the last part. It is nothing less than truth; he had planned to ensure that David’s sins did not go ignored, that his mad brother did not go to oblivion without hearing her name one last time. Now, his plans are unnecessary. Daniels is alive and well, and choking down stale oatmeal at his elbow.

“As much as I would’ve loved to see that,” she says through a mouthful, “I’m glad it turned out this way instead. Now we get to go kill him together.”

“I would like that very much.”

“Okay. It’s a date.”

Humans and their adages, Walter thinks. Had the rest of the _Covenant_ ’s crew been alive to hear that one, he and Daniels would have spent weeks on the receiving end of teasing from all quarters. But what the dead don’t know, they cannot laugh over.

Walter finds that he would have much preferred to suffer the teasing, if it would only bring his crew back.

*

He estimates that an attack on their first night is probable. They were almost certainly followed on their way to the landing site, and it is highly unlikely he would have detected any unwanted presence behind them; their group was too large, too unaccustomed to the terrain, too loudly relieved at their freedom. The forest provides plentiful concealment for a natural hunter. And, under cover of darkness, they must make tempting targets. Something is sure to try its luck.

Much like humans, Walter normally enjoys being proven right. Unfortunately, this is not a normal occasion.

“There’s something out there,” the teacher says abruptly, pointing out into the trees. “I saw movement.”

The cartographer grips his gun. “Should we go and take a look?”

“No.” Daniels speaks softly, but her tone is unyielding, and she has taken on something of a leadership role over the course of the day. The colonists listen to her in a way they cannot bring themselves to do for Walter. “Nobody goes off alone. This fire is our best defence, and we need to stay as close to it as we can. Also- if anyone here hasn’t used a gun before, tonight is not the time to change that. You’ll just hurt yourself, or someone else. Don’t get trigger happy.” She watches the cartographer, unblinking, until he sets his gun on the ground next to him, pointed well away from anyone else. “Thank you.”

Tennessee is trusted with a firearm. But he has heard the stories from Daniels and Walter, and witnessed first-hand an attack within the _Covenant_ ; he knows what doesn’t work against these creatures. He sits with the unfamiliar axe in his lap. Not many things can survive a good beheading, he points out.

Walter neglects to inform him that a synthetic certainly could, and he himself has. It seems unproductive to share that information at the current time.

Instead, he hands out sturdy branches they have stripped of leaf and twig; makeshift torches that he hopes will deter an attack. One by one, the colonists dip theirs into the fire. The branches do not catch as well if they would if wrapped in rags, or if there was any form of accelerant to hand. But Walter has spent what little time he had searching for any fuel-like substance aboard the ship, and come up empty. He does not dare chance the unidentified liquids from the medical bay without some form of analysis. Now, he berates himself for not doing so on the journey over. Too many assumptions; he assumed there would be no use for medical intervention, and that any infected colonists would need to be swiftly neutralised. He assumed he would not be taking survivors aboard the alien vessel. He assumed Daniels would be dead.

These are human errors, and he has allowed his bereavement protocols to drown out common sense. That should never have happened. He allowed himself to be unprepared.

Never again. He, Tennessee and Daniels have discussed the potential for attack. They have made plans. He hopes they are ready.

Movement in the treeline. In the long grass; a shadow flickering on the churned-up earth.

“It’s coming-” says the doctor, and then the creature is on them.

It moves so quickly. For all his past experience, Walter is still surprised by the unnatural speed with which the monster slips between his colonists, tail coiling past their ankles. So quiet; far outside of the human hearing range, leaving Walter to bear sole witness to the hiss of its breath, the unseen pulse of organs under chitin. Reflecting the firelight, shining roach-like, moving with panther grace.

Walter lifts his torch and attacks.

He calculates a high likelihood that the creature will follow his movement, will treat him as the immediate threat and leave his colonists alone while it is occupied with neutralising him. He feints to one side, dodging a swipe from claws the length of his forearm, knobbed like tree roots. He cannot afford to let them touch him. The juvenile he faced on David’s unnamed planet was able to tear his hand off without discernible effort; the one before him now is no juvenile. He jabs at its teeth with the torch, and it flinches back, hissing. Someone screams in the background. The firepit is a molten heat at his back.

“Stand _back_ ,” Walter barks. “Don’t let it touch you.” He swings again. The torch bounces off that blunt black head, apparently unnoticed.

“Keep it distracted, Walter, that’s it.” Tennessee inches his way around the creature’s side, axe held in front of his chest. He will need to be careful. He knows this. The creature’s blood could cause untold damage if it comes into contact with human skin.

On Walter’s right, Daniels crouches at the ready. She has rope in her hands. All their survival packs came equipped, and she was the one to identify it as potentially of value in case of attack. She has tied a lasso in the heavy rope braid. She is confident she will be able to catch the creature’s feet; she trust in her skill with the rope. All of Walter’s cautions were silenced by her simple reminder that she and her husband had once been avid mountaineers.

“Come on, you son of a bitch,” Tennessee mutters as Walter takes another swipe at the creature. “ _Come on_.”

“Move it my way, Walter,” Daniels orders. Her tone is grim, unyielding. Her eyes are wide and terrified. She will not have much room for error.

Their colonists are another liability, thankfully managed; they have obeyed orders to keep the firepit between themselves and the attacker, and their lit torches add another deterrent. The meteorologist is the only one among them to hold a gun at the ready. She alone has trained in marksmanship. If the creature tries an attack on the colonists, she knows to open fire.

But they hope it won’t come to that.

Walter steps to the left, and the creature moves to face him, tail whipping through the air around its shoulders, taking experimental jabs at his eyes. He estimates that it is almost in range of Daniels’ rope. Tennessee stands ready with his axe.

“Daniels,” he says.

“Here,” she tells him.

Walter takes a step back, narrowly dodging another swipe from the creature’s oversized fingers. The next swipe comes faster than he expects, faster than the human eye could perceive; Walter sees it and ducks, but he is thrown off-balance, no longer certain of his steps in their dance. He sees the tail coil up high.

Walter calculates his options.

If he moves left, he pulls the creature out of Daniels’ range, and potentially endangers Tennessee.

If he moves further back, he will step directly into the firepit, and probably set himself alight.

If he moves to the right, he gives Daniels her chance at roping one of the creature’s legs. But if she misses, or he startles her, then she may become the next target. And this is unacceptable.

There is of course another option. Walter sees to tail begin to flick his way, whip-like, sharper than knives. He recalculates.

Suddenly, a problem becomes a solution.

The tail catches the side of his face, ripping skin and synthetic tendons open, spraying white circulation fluid across the ground. There is no pain; he is not equipped for that particular sensation, for which he is grateful. His cheek hangs open from jaw almost to temple. The white lines of his artificial musculature sit on full display, exposed to the elements; patches of carbon-fibre skeleton peek out underneath them. Cut to the bone. Alarms begin blaring in his head.

“ _No!_ ” he hears Daniels shout. “Not him, you can’t have him, dammit, no!” At the periphery of his vision, Walter sees her lunge.

Her aim is as good as her word; she hooks one of the monster’s legs on her first attempt, pulling the noose tight, throwing her weight behind the rope. She yanks it off balance. It turns on her, enraged, and is met instead with Walter’s burning torch directly between its jaws. He forces the fire down its gullet, straining as it tosses its head. He holds firm. He will not be bucked loose this time; he will not let David’s pet defeat him. He will not let it turn against Daniels.

There comes a crunching sound from within the creature’s throat. For a moment, Walter thinks that it has bitten his torch in two.

Its jaw slips open, saliva dripping freely. Its second mouth is jammed around the stick. Several teeth have cracked under the force of biting down. Walter cannot move away; he is trapped against the firepit, hemmed in tight. He cannot afford to let go of the torch. He stares the eyeless creature down.

Then the crunching sound comes again, and the creature shrieks.

“How’d you like that, huh? Bet it fucking stings. How about another?” Tennessee swings a third time, burying his axe deep in alien spinal column. Whatever organs he strikes, they must be vital; the creature collapses on senseless legs, its tail dropping limp upon the ground. It claws the earth with its mammoth hands, but those are easily avoided. Walter dodges them and steps to safety.

“Good aim, Tee,” Daniels says. “That was perfect.”

“Only got it because you pulled its legs out from underneath it. Good plan, Captain.” This time, Tennessee takes careful aim before bringing the axe down, almost bisecting the creature’s spine. Its struggles die down to twitches. There is very little blood, it seems; its back is mostly bone and sinuous tail.

“We should burn it immediately,” Walter says. “I doubt that it could recover from the wounds Tennessee has dealt it, but I cannot say for certain. Better to be safe. We need to drag it to the fire.”

“Good thing I have all this rope, then,” Daniels says, briskly. Her hands shake with adrenaline. She bares her teeth in a wild expression that looks nothing like a smile, and far more like a terrified, animal threat. Her cheeks and forehead shine with fear-sweat. Tennessee is no better. Their bravado is a performance piece, an act put on for the colonists. But it works. Daniels gives orders, and the colonists leave the safety of their fire, tie ropes around the shivering, dying monster, and begin to drag it to be burnt.

Daniels refuses Walter’s help when he offers. She lifts a hand to his ruined cheek. Stops before she touches him. This time, she is able to look at him without flinching.

“That must hurt,” she says quietly. “Can you start fixing it up? I’ll come help just as soon as we’re done here.” Her face is pale, sweat-streaked. She is still panting from the exertion, hunching over to catch her breath.

“Of course,” he tells her. “I will see to it.”

He turns back to the ship, climbing the ramp and walking right past the medical bay in favour of the engineering section. There are a variety of tools in there. Most, he cannot identity. Others are simpler to understand: the shovels they used to dig their firepit, the axe with which Tennessee killed a monster. Hundreds of things which betray the oddly human-like needs of the ship’s old owners. Perhaps they were much the same. A mighty civilisation, brought low by David’s wilful malice.

Circulation fluid drips down his cheek, staining his neck and chest. Cold, damp, trickling steady. Like tears.

In the engineering section, Walter identifies a blowtorch.

*

Daniels is true to her promise; she comes to find him an hour or so later, when the fire has had its chance to break down the creature’s chitin exterior, boil away its acid blood and sterilise any chance of infection. It is wise of her to take her time. Wise to make sure that the job is done properly, that the colonists do not settle for halfway measures in their ignorance. Walter highly approves.

He is also grateful for the extra time it affords him to finish his work. Better that she does not have to witness the process. The end result will be more than enough of a shock as it is.

“Walter?” he hears her calling from the corridor outside the engineering section. “Are you okay? Can I do anything to help?”

“In here,” he tells her.

She steps through the doorway tentatively, emergency field-light gripped in one hand. The ship’s lighting systems have been dead since crash; without them, the humans fumble in the darkness, and rely on the handheld emergency lights from their rucksacks. A sustainable form of illumination, given that the lights will recharge in sunlight. Still, they are weak. Daniels treads carefully in the darkness.

“Fuck, I hate this thing,” she mutters, avoiding a workbench. “Every single spaceship ever can go straight to hell, I am _done_ with them all. This one doesn’t even have a Mother to talk to.”

“It might,” Walter says. “But I never worked out how to wake the onboard AI. And after witnessing my best attempt at a landing, I would not be surprised if it refused to speak to me on principle.”

“You did your best-” he sees the exact moment her light reveals his face to her. He sees her moment of realisation. Of understanding. She knows what he has done.

Cauterisation stops the healing process. It is an in-built safety valve, in case he were ever to take damage of a kind that should not be metabolised and dispersed through his system while he healed. Acids, toxins, dangerous chemicals. If there is ever a need to stop a wound from fully healing, he can always seal it with heat. He will self-repair enough to seal off his internal structure from the potential of electrocution. The external damage will remain, and vividly.

He is aware of human aesthetic sensibilities, and the concept of the uncanny valley. Cautious of the cultural stigmas associated with skull-like imagery. He has sealed over his carbon-fibre teeth, hidden them under musculature and melted polyurethane. With luck, the more superstitious colonists will not deem him an unlucky omen. He has done his best. But he could not allow himself to heal entire.

“You will not have to worry about mistaking me for David now,” he tells her as she stumbles closer, stunned. “Cutting off a hand is one thing. He would struggle to perfectly emulate the damage done here. I encourage you to memorise the burn pattern, and take immediate countermeasures if it seems to randomly deviate. He will not fool you again.”

Daniels shakes her head. “You didn’t have to do that. I would _never_ \- I wouldn’t have asked you do that.”

“No, of course not,” he says, perplexed by the response. “It was my duty. We cannot function as an optimal unit if you and Tennessee cannot bear to look at me without flinching.”

This fails to address the fact that the colonists will be doing the flinching instead. He reasons; rationalises. The trauma he would inflict on Daniels and Tennessee by walking around with David’s face far exceeds any temporary feelings of revulsion his new appearance might inspire in the colonists. Humans have the capacity for rapid adjustment. It is a great part of the reason they have thrived, expanded, begun to seize new planets for themselves. They adapt to even the unpleasant. In a few days, most of the colonists will cease to notice; the damage will be as white noise to them. Until then, he will attempt to address them in profile only, side-on, so that they might only have to see his undamaged face. It will be an effort, but he’ll manage.

He finds this far preferable to causing Daniels further pain.

She watches him with an expression of resignation. Once, she might have apologised. She might have cried for him. Now, her eyes are drought-stricken, indicative of an inner desolation characteristic of some trauma survivors. No doubt she feels numbness, broken up by periods of adrenaline when the hunters get too close. Her nightmares, her very own grotesquery, a nightly storm that ravages her emotional state, sterilising any fertile growth that might take hold. She will not allow herself to rest, to heal, until she feels her job is done. Until then, she is trapped in a feedback loop of her own trauma.

Again, Walter feels compelled to offer his psychiatric services. He hesitates, trying to calculate a way of doing so that is least likely to cause offense.

Daniels speaks before he can decide. “Thank you,” she says quietly. “You didn’t have to. It _wasn’t_ duty. But you’re right, it does help. So…thank you.”

“I am glad to have been of service,” he says automatically, as he is programmed to do. And then, “If there is ever anything I do which reminds you of my counterpart, I only ask that you tell me. Any mannerisms, or figures of speech-”

“Your accent’s different,” she reminds him.

“So it is.” He registers a sense of appreciation for his creators; even above the usual, which was programmed into him. “Very different.”

“Yours is better.”

“I am the more advanced model. It stands to reason that I should be an improvement.”

Her lips quirk; they quiver on the edge of a smile, an expression that seems painfully out of place on her drawn, pale face. “It’s okay,” she says. “You’re allowed to say it, I won’t tell anyone. _I’m pretty fucking great_. Go ahead, say it. I know you want to.”

He would like to argue with her. The statement goes against a long list of protocols, including modesty, humility, and the avoidance of inappropriate language. This quite aside from the fact that he doesn’t feel particularly _great_. He has not completed his mission; David has not been neutralised, the planet could well be crawling with his creatures, and Daniels is still in grave danger, and concealing some kind of wound from him. She does not yet trust him enough to confide. This, more than anything, suggests that he has a very long way to go.

“Say it,” she urges. “I’ve never heard you say anything good about yourself. You did most of the work on the _Covenant._ You did everything for us. Shit, after…after the accident with the pods, you were the one looking after me, and I know you didn’t have time for that.”

“Untrue,” he objects. “Your health is my highest priority.”

“And I appreciate that. All the stuff you do for us, that’s amazing. And I want to hear you say it.”

She is insistent. He sighs. “Must I?”

“Yup.”

“Very well. On the condition that you do not tell Tennessee.” He pauses to shut down several of the more insistent protocols vying for his attention. Modesty. Humility. Obligatory inferiority. Silenced one by one. “If you will permit me to say so, you are _not_ a very good influence. Also, _I’m pretty fucking great_.” He parrots her tone, equal parts smug and triumphant, a combination he has never used before. It’s worrying how easily he takes to it.

She doesn’t quite smile. But there is something brighter about her eyes, a softness he hasn’t seen since she still believed in hope. “Yeah,” she says. “You are. And don’t you forget it.”

*****

The attacks only come at night. The evidence is mounting: these creatures of David’s have a high sensitivity to light, and shy away from it. Walter has replayed the footage from the first attack in the wheat fields, diverting valuable processing power, analysing it a hundred thousand times over. David fired a flare. The response was immediate: withdrawal, retreat, and shrieks that he classifies as pain. It is enough for him to tentatively conclude that they should be safe by day, if they stick to the sunlight.

Origae-6 is a sunlit planet. If there are storms like those on Earth, he has not yet seen them. Daniels confirms that she never perceived any during her waking captivity. Sun showers occur several times a day, the rain falling gently from patchy clumps of cloud, dissipating into mist. There are rainbows. This phenomenon of light and water is hardly remarkable, and certainly not the most mysterious part of the new planet, and yet it is the one his human colleagues comment on the most. When the first one appeared, several of them wept. He theorises that they find comfort in familiarity.

The lack of real storms renders the days safer still; there is no adequate cloud coverage to allow for stealth attacks. Nonetheless, they move around in pairs, all but one armed with makeshift fire starters. The geologist is exempt on the grounds of his moderate pyrophobia. It is an inconvenience, but Walter tries to make allowances.

There are many to make. He does not partner himself with any of the colonists who find synthetics to be a cause for discomfort. This excludes half the party. The damage to his face is a further complication, in that it upsets even the remaining two colonists, perhaps to the point of causing trauma; he suspects at least one is on the verge of developing a genuine phobia. This is unfortunate, but unavoidable. For the moment, Walter stays close to Tennessee and Daniels.

They work. All were made to attend training sessions on basic outdoor living back on Earth, and they take it in turns to make traps. Trees are cut, stripped, branches sharpened into stakes. They begin to build pits, to weave nets from alien leaves. Their botanist does good work here, although she protests her lack of expertise; she takes samples of plant life before allowing anyone else to touch it, and then she and Walter conduct tests for poisons and allergens. A thorny, amber-flowered bush is deemed an irritant; the spongy, reddish moss is edible, as are the spherical silver berries. The tree with fibrous, star-shaped leaves is strong, and might be good for steaming food, if they had any.

Hunger is a constant source of concern, and Walter has added it to the ever-growing list of directives labelled HIGHEST PRIORITY. The rations contained in their emergency rucksacks will run low soon; stocks were never meant to last for longer than a week. The quality of the food has a direct negative impact on morale.

They gather. They would hunt too, given opportunity. But busy as he is with testing new plant life and water sources, Walter is unable to accompany a hunting party immediately. He asks them to wait a few days, to stay close to the ship. They agree. He accepts this, trusts their honesty, and redirects his processes towards analysis.

Several hours later, Daniels appears from the treeline carrying several furred animals the length of her forearm, her left cheek smeared with dirt. She didn’t need a weapon, she explains. The creatures did not recognise her as a threat. She simply plucked them from the ground and snapped their necks; they taught her how to do so in the training sessions. She found it easier than expected.

“Sorry, Walter,” she says, as if in afterthought. “I know we’re not supposed to wander off. I just figured it might stop everyone from complaining at mealtimes. Doesn’t bother me, but berries for breakfast is making everyone grumpy. And nobody likes the ration packs.”

He stands from his post, where he has spent most of the morning analysing samples of rainwater to determine their safety for consumption. Protocols war within him. He should praise her achievement, her initiative in addressing a problem he himself has so far failed to solve; he should thank her for her efforts; he should scold her disobedience, or reinforce his request that they all stay near the camp site.

In the back of his mind, several newer processes activate. He has rarely had use for them; they are too aggressive, highly situational. He wants to ask her how she could be so foolish, as to wander off alone in unfamiliar forests. He wants to raise his voice, to impress on her how serious the situation is.

 _How could you_ , recites a line of code, a whisper under the rest. _When I travelled so far, so long, to come and find you. How could you put yourself at risk like that? If you are killed, what is the point of any of this?_

He doesn’t say it out loud. But he has devoted too much processing power to these small, internal battles, and lost control of his facial muscles; in an absence of command, they have settled into whatever emotional state they deemed most prominent.

He is very much afraid it might be that last. The look on Daniels’ face supports this. She is stricken.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Walter? I’m sorry. I just needed to go for a walk, I didn’t think. But that’s how everyone else got picked off, and it’s stupid. I won’t do it again. Sorry I scared you.”

“No harm done,” he responds in the hopes of reassuring her. “But I would very much appreciate it if, the next time you need a walk, you take me with you. I will activate silent mode and walk a set distance away from you, so that you can pretend you are alone.”

“Yeah, that’s a ‘no’ to the silent mode,” she tells him. “I know you hate your silent mode; you always look like it breaks your heart to activate it.”

This is almost certainly erroneous; he cannot fathom how he could have lost so much control of his facial functions as to give her that impression. Surely he would have noticed. And how could she have seen what nobody else in the crew did?

It’s true: he has an aversion to his silent mode that would border on passionate hate, if he felt such things.

“Very well,” he tells her, eager to drop the matter. “’No’ to silent mode. Now, seeing as your rather unsafe wandering has resulted in a reward, rather than the expected brutal death, perhaps you will allow me to run some tests on these creatures? I estimate that I should finish just in time to start preparing them for dinner.”

“Thanks for always caring,” she says cryptically, and gives him the animals.

*

As night falls, they light fires. It’s a calculated risk; the smell of smoke and the light flickering between trees is bound to attract attention.

Origae-6 has very little in the way of predatory species. None of them are very large, which is interesting and adds another piece to the puzzle that is David’s currently activities. He is having to ration his experiment subjects. The prey-animals Daniels hunted for food are much too small to incubate one of his creatures. That leaves him with just the colonists, unless he can find some way around that limitation. He will have to take his time.

The fires risk attracting his monsters, but they also provide a line of defence, and a weapon. The group keeps a stack of pared-down branches within reach, the tips wrapped up in the driest leaves their botanist could find on the forest floor. Torches are mere seconds away. Fire is their greatest ally after sundown.

They sleep inside the spaceship. It’s dark, cold, unfamiliar; the surfaces are made for a race of people of just slightly different dimensions to humans, with different expectations of what constitutes comfort. Nobody enjoys retiring for the night. And although none of the colonists suffer from claustrophobia, their dissatisfaction grows ever plainer. They snap at each other. They grow sullen. None of them trust Walter enough to accept his offers of mediation, or therapy sessions. He is helpless to do anything other than create work rosters and hand out assignments.

They resent him for this too. He has no right to be giving them orders, and everyone knows it. His authority is undermined by the non-human nature of his existence. His mutilated face does not help matters. Too much white synthetic interior on display. They cannot pretend he is anything other than what he is. They cannot pretend he is like them.

He is grateful for Daniels’ gift of an extra food source for the evening, even though the risks she took to obtain it were much too high. Still, he is grateful. Full stomachs mean a break from arguments. And though he is told that the meat tastes unfamiliar, simultaneously gamey and sweet, he observes a marked improvement in spirits. Now, there is laughter. They playfully criticise their dinner, with far better cheer than the previous bitter comments referring to their ration packs.

Conversation shifts in a manner Walter deems acceptably predictable; they begin to talk about Earth. Specifically, Earth’s food.

“I’d kill for some fucking barbecue,” Tennessee says. “Hell, I’d settle for a chunk of cow meat on a stick, I’d make do. Got me a fire right here. Most things taste better after you put them over a nice, hot fire.”

“I’ve never had a grilled salad before,” the botanist says, to chuckles.

“Get your rabbit food away from me,” Tennessee tells her. “A well-seasoned steak is god’s own gift to mankind.”-

Daniels groans, leaning forward to rest her chin on her knees. “The food talk? Seriously? Are we doing this again?”

“Just for you, Danny, we are now,” Tennessee says. “Alright, I got dibs on steak and barbecue. Who’s up next?”

The botanist raises a hand. “Well, I’m sticking with my salad, if that’s what you’re asking. Crisp and fresh, from my own garden. And then when I’m done with that, I’ll probably still have room for most of your steak.”

Walter tunes their voices out. He doesn’t ignore them, of course; that would not be courteous, and there is always the chance that he might be asked to contribute to the conversation. Unlikely, given the subject matter, and the relative discomfort the colonists have expressed at his very obvious synthetic nature. But Daniels might ask. She has a tendency to do that kind of thing. So, rather than totally ignoring the discussion, he lowers the volume to background noise, dedicating several processes to picking up on key words and following the train of conversation. The rest of his hearing extends outwards, picking up on every errant rustle and twitch of leaf and blade of grass. He has excellent auditory sensors; Weyland-Yutani marketed this feature as _360° environmental awareness_ , and the description is an accurate one. He is confident he will be aware of any intruder within a half mile of their camp. They will not be taken by surprise.

He is not so focused on listening that he doesn’t notice Daniels’ lack of engagement in the conversation. She sits still, chin on her knees, eyes on the fire. A distant expression. Too late, he remembers the fire she watched consume her husband. Is she back there? Or elsewhere; does she remember their desperate fires on the other planet, stranded in a bleak stone monument with monsters all around them, a storm raging outside?

She should be distracted immediately, he decides. He will wake her from her reverie.  

“Pizza,” he announces into a gap in the conversation. All eyes turn to him, some more welcoming than others. He in turn addresses Daniels. “That was the food you nominated as your favourite, back on the _Covenant_.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I’m surprised you remembered.”

“I have highly advanced memory banks, and plenty of hard drive space for storage.”

“You’re not actually supposed to use that space for trivial things, though,” says the geologist. “My grandma has a Walter model, I read the manual to her. I mean, obviously _hers_ remembered all the stuff she liked, he was one of the babysitting models-”

“Caregiver,” Walter corrects politely.

“Sure. That’s pretty much what I said. Anyway, I read the manual. I know what your long term memory storage parameters look like. You have a lot of space, but not enough to remember every little thing about a crew of fourteen.”

“I deemed it non-trivial information,” Walter says. He pauses to modulate his voice slightly, aware that he may have come off as too sharp. “The mission was in its early days and the crew were still engaged in social bonding. The early conversations would shape how relationships formed. I decided it was important to remember any personal preferences expressed by crew members. That way, I could bring them up at a later date, and so establish a personal connection.” It’s a good explanation. Partially true, or at least true enough to ward off further questioning.

It would of course have been a waste of memory space to commit that sort of minutiae to his permanent memory banks, and he didn’t do so. He has no recollection of what preferences most of the crew expressed. He would not have known of Tennessee’s liking for barbecue if it had not been repeated.

He doesn’t remember making a conscious decision to save _DANIELS: PREFERS PIZZA_. That is cause for concern.

At his side, Daniels nudges him gently with a knee. “Ever had pizza, Walter?” she asks.

“Sadly, I have not had the pleasure.”

“I wish you could,” she tells him. “It’s the most amazing thing. I wish I’d thought to take you out to a pizza place before we left. I know, you had all those maintenance sessions and extra tests and whatever. I still should’ve.”

Walter accesses certain databases he hasn’t touched in some time. They are a familiar fit, like the weight of a well-loved book in hand. He is, after all, very good in the kitchen.

“The oven could be built,” he decides. “The dough is simple; flour, water, oil, yeast. Salt. We have supplies of each aboard the _Covenant,_ and more could be procured over time, once our agricultural efforts take shape. Much of the flavour rests in the base and toppings. We have live tomatoes, freeze-dried garlic and basil. We also have considerable quantities of frozen grated cheese substitute. A pizza could be managed. Several, even.”

It’s a long moment before her expression changes. When she smiles, he finds himself turning further in her direction, trying to capture as much of it as possible with his visual receptors. It’s been a long time. Far too long, and his emotional spectrum processes kick into overdrive, providing a positive feedback flood in reward for his successful social achievement.

“Are you telling me that the only things standing between me and my goddamn pizza are David and his monsters?” she asks.

“That is correct.”

“Well, that’s that, then. Now they _have_ to die.”

Without conscious command, he finds himself smiling back.

*

By the fourth night at the ship, they have something of a routine. Daniels and Walter take first watch while the others retire. There are no arguments; by that time, most of the group is exhausted, ready for sleep.

Daniels is the exception. She has a strong dislike for the ship, an aversion that shows itself in her reluctance to go near it, except when necessary. She sends Tennessee inside to fetch anything they might need. Walter has taken note of the behaviour; it has happened often enough to constitute a pattern, and it concerns him. He can find no note on claustrophobia in her files, and she coped very well indeed on the _Covenant_ and the terraforming bay, where enclosed spaces were a vital part of her work. This is a new development.

He cannot tell if she is afraid of the ship’s close confines, or something within the ship itself. Either way, the fear presents itself in the form of a refusal to enter until she almost too exhausted to walk straight. Too exhausted to think. There is a nightmare that waits behind her eyelids, stalking the shadows of her mind. She believes she can avoid it by depriving herself of sleep.

Walter has decided to keep very close to her at night. He shares every watch shift she volunteers for. He has asked for and obtained permission to lie near her, while she sleeps and he runs his nightly system health scans. He hopes the proximity will eventually encourage her to speak with him, to tell him what haunts her.

There is of course a very high probability that the answer to that question begins and ends with David. Walter makes sure to always sit or lie down so that his damaged side is facing her. Her cannot expect her to talk if she sees his brother in his face.

So far, watch duty with Daniels has proven to be quiet. They maintain the fires. They check their makeshift torches. Sometimes they make small talk, which he allows Daniels to direct; she has a great liking for sharing stories of the _Covenant_ , he has found. Those early days, the first meetings and crew training sessions, the time they spent together in space before the crew were put to sleep. She treasures those times. She refers to them as some of the very few moments in her life in which she felt herself to have a family.

“Hey, Walter?” At his side, Daniels leans forward to add another log to the fire. She sits cross-legged, elbows on her knees; it is a position he has seen her favour recently, though she did not do so on the _Covenant_. Other times she sits with her legs folded up against her chest, knees under her chin. Both positions have the effect of making her seem smaller, shielding her throat and abdomen. This may be subconscious; she may not realise the nonverbal messages she is sending. He does not yet dare ask her about it.

“Yes?”

“You remember all the calculations you used to do on board the _Covenant_ , right? The stupid ones. Like how when Tee found out that you’d calculate literally anything he asked, and it was all he cared about for three days straight?”

“I would struggle to forget the experience,” Walter says. “As I recall, he once requested that I calculate his ‘chances of getting laid tonight’. I obliged, reluctantly. He then proceeded to make a complimentary statement regarding his wife, to which she responded with amusement, and I was subsequently asked to repeat the calculation to see if the outcome had changed.”

“I’m not even going to ask.”

“I was rather hoping you wouldn’t.”

“Seriously though. Could you…do some calculating for me? I mean, I guess it’s probably a bad idea to ask, and kind of morbid. But I’ve never lied to myself. I want to know the truth, even if it’s not a good thing; even if it hurts. So, tell me. What are our chances?”

He could stall. Could attempt to change the subject, or dither until she becomes distracted. He could claim that a lack of data makes the calculations impossible, except that he would be lying, and it is against his programming to lie.

“Not high,” he says. “Although the odds of every member of this group surviving the next five to seven days are reasonable, those odds drop considerably if we extend the timeframe to longer than a week. After that…I cannot say. Suffice to say our chances are not good. If we were to split into smaller parties, we might be picked off, one by one. However, by staying as a group, we emit more signals of our presence, thus attracting more attention.”

Daniels is silent for a few seconds, digesting the information. She does not seem overly distraught to hear it. No doubt it is nothing more than she expected. He waits.

“Better not split up,” she says at last. “I’ve learnt my lesson about that. Not to mention it puts you in an awkward position, I mean, it’s your _job_ to look after all the colonists. Who are you supposed to stick with if we split?”

The answer is instinctive, and simple. “You.”

“You know I’m not technically a colonist. Once we’re landed, they take priority over crew. They’re the ones with all the important skills.”

“Nonetheless, my answer has not changed. However, if it would please you, I could dedicate the next two minutes to calculating the most appropriate response to a scenario in which the group split up, either voluntarily or otherwise. I should warn you that it would constitute a waste of processing power. As I just stated: my answer hasn’t changed. It will continue to remain static, whatever the variables.”

Daniels sighs heavily, and digs an elbow into his ribs. After several expectant seconds, Walter offers a hesitant, “Ow.”

“Walter,” she says. By her tone, it is a clear reprimand, and he twitches several facial muscles into something like contrition. “Be serious.”

“I am incapable of being otherwise.”

“Says the guy who brought me weed to help with the grieving process.”

“Yes,” he agrees. “It was a serious solution, offered with utmost seriousness.”

She looks at him for a long moment. And maybe it’s the shadows, the play of firelight that half-obscures her features; her expression defies analysis. He captures a series of images in highest quality, tagging them IMPORTANT and storing them away for later perusal. “That,” she says, “is the most bullshit thing I have ever heard. And I’ve heard some pretty bullshit things in my life.”

“I have no doubt of this.”

She plucks a stray twig from their pile of kindling and tosses it at him. The throw is gentle, clearly telegraphing an absence of intent to harm. He allows it to rebound from his shoulder and land on the grass.

For a moment, they look at each other.

“Ow?” Walter offers tentatively.

Daniels smiles. It makes her cheeks rounder, her eyes crinkle at the corners; aesthetically speaking, the effect is a very pleasant one. “Wow,” she says. “Just like that, you get to claim ownership of the _two_ most bullshit things I’ve ever heard. At this rate I’m going to have to find you a trophy or something.”

“I aspire to excellence in all things,” Walter tells her, and doesn’t bother to dodge the next few sticks she throws at him. He rather feels he might deserve them.

*

Their peace cannot last, of course; this is not some idyllic interplanetary camping trip. The next night, they are attacked.

Nobody is killed, this time.

The meteorologist comes closest. She receives a nasty wound to one arm, three savage claw marks that split her skin to bone. The bleeding is black, prodigious, and slow to clot; she screams when they staunch the flow. There is a very good chance the wound will turn septic by dawn. If so, they will have to amputate.

Their doctor does her best. Like the botanist, she is forced to work outside of her specialisation, fumbling at disciplines she studied years ago and did not fully retain. Even Walter struggles to be of use; his medical knowledge is mostly restricted to the ways and means of caring for a crew in space, and minding their pods while they slept. Field medicine was never part of his programming. It was generally expected that, sometime soon after landing in Origae-6, having outlived his usefulness, he would be deactivated to preserve the illusion that the mission was a purely human venture.

This has not yet occurred. Instead, he finds himself stranded on a planet he is ill-equipped to work around, struggling to care for a group of humans who are even less prepared than he. It is a humbling experience. He has not felt fully in control of a situation for a long time.

“Get her into the medical bay,” the doctor says, nodding over her shoulder at the ship. She neglects to mention that the medical bay is barely functional, damaged by the crash and almost two decades’ worth of neglect, and not made for humans in the first place. There is no point to mentioning it. They are all aware.

Two of the colonists carry their fallen partner back to the ship as Walter stokes the fire as high as he can. Tennessee grips an unlit torch in stiff fingers, snarling at the shadows beyond their campsite. Daniels stalks the edge of the fire, not quite close enough to risk her own immolation, and still too close for Walter to feel comfortable. He is disturbed by calculations he has made, which suggest she will respond to a direct attack on her own person by throwing herself into the fire. It is difficult to know how accurate those calculations are without requesting further data from her. He doesn’t dare. He doesn’t want to know what she will tell him.

Somewhere in the woods, the creature prowls. They did not even manage to wound it.

*

Dawn finds them fraught with worry, clinging to routine to dissipate their fear.

The teacher emerges from the ship just before dawn for the first of his prayers; as per usual, Walter is present to calculate planetary rotations and degrees of tilt, and point towards the direction of Mecca, which is to say Earth. He then proceeds to make himself as unobtrusive as possible. He is programmed to perform a variety of services in several religious denominations, but prayer is something different. His participation would only cause offense. Synthetics have no souls, and therefore god has no interest in them.

The geologist arrives second, to perform his usual morning half-hour jog. They cannot risk him straying too far from camp, and so he is restricted to an infinite loop around and around the spaceship, the monotony a clear irritation to him. Again, Walter offers a greeting, which is ignored. He goes back to keeping watch.

The botanist is next. She prepares breakfasts voluntarily, sorting through whatever edible plant life she harvested the day before, and supplementing this with oatmeal, water, and milk powder from their ration packs. She admits that she takes charge of this preparation to discourage others from foraging, so she can control what plants they consume and ensure that they touch nothing else. This is a very sensible attitude to take, and Walter has raised her several points up the protection priority ladder. Impressively, in these last few days she has even managed to coax Tennessee into assisting with milk powder rehydration, and seems immune to his complaints. This development bodes well for strengthening social bonds within the group. It is important that the colonists and the two remaining crew do not see each other as separate beings.

The cartographer sleeps as late as he can manage, and rises reluctantly. This is cause for concern. In their high-stress situation, it is not unexpected that mental health will decline, and Walter observes all the colonists for signs that they might be isolating themselves, sleeping overmuch, or growing reluctant to leave their assigned resting places inside the fallen ship. He believes the cartographer is at risk. There is nothing he can do about it, however; the man’s phobia of synthetics is too strong to allow for interference. Walter had meant to ask their doctor for assistance. Unfortunately, she is unable to leave her patient in the medical bay.

Daniels rises as soon as she wakes. She will not spend a moment longer inside the ship than she needs to, no matter how little sleep she might have managed. Together, she and Walter walk the perimeter of the crash site, checking their traps. She is never vocal so early in the morning. Walter obliges her with silence.

By mid-morning, he and the doctor declare themselves certain that the meteorologist’s wounds are not infected. She will survive them, though the scarring will be significant. They will not need to amputate. She is feverish, but mildly so, and water supplies are plentiful now that they have deemed the nearby river safe for drinking.

She clasps his arm and thanks him for helping her; he is surprised to find that she is no longer flinching from the damage to his face. This is a pleasant development. He may be able to remove the fear of synthetics from her phobia list, if she is adapting.

Tennessee is forcibly cheerful. He states that they are all owed some good luck, after the night they just had. Daniels simply offers to widen the firepit and bring in more wood. They all pass the day working to shore up their defences; by dusk, the general mood is grim, but prepared. They eat the remnants of the animals from the day before, along with scavenged vegetation. Their botanist has found an edible root that responds well to steaming. She describes the taste as something between fennel and potato, and most of the group agrees that they could come to like it. Tennessee is the exception; he claims an aversion to vegetables as a matter of principle. Still, when he eats his share and then finishes the leftovers, nobody comments.

There is hope.

*

The monster attacks again. They chase it back into the treeline with fire, but it lingers nearby and returns several times in the night. Each time, they are ready.

Just before dawn, it leaves them alone; first, however, it kills their cartographer.

The death is swift, evisceration taking place in seconds, probably too fast for pain. The humans would not have seen it happen. One moment their colonist is with them, though a few steps too far from the fire. The next he is crumpling, reduced to red slime, shattered bone, vomiting blood down his chest.

Walter registers a mild mental clamour as his programming points out to him that he has failed several directives by letting a colonist die. He shuts them down and occupies himself with his rudimentary flaming torch, jabbing at the creature until it flees, jaws dripping a blackish red trail across the grass. Walter gives chase until it disappears from view.

He failed. And he is ashamed of himself.

He returns to camp to find that Daniels has taken charge, and is dragging the cartographer towards the fire, unassisted. There is blood on her gloves, her arms, her chest. She strains to move the much larger man as he twitches against her grasp. She cannot bring herself to touch the viscera trailing behind him in the dirt.

“Help me,” she says to Walter. Her expression is totally blank; her hands shake like leaves. “We have to burn him, that _thing_ might have- I don’t know, we have to be sure. We have to burn him.”

“He might still be alive,” the doctor protests. “I can check-”

“ _No!_ ” Daniels barks at her, and she jerks back in shock. “That’s how we lost most of the _Covenant_ crew. People got sick, and we didn’t know what it was so we tried to take care of them. Even after we knew, we still couldn’t do anything other than hope it would get better. Even when we knew it wouldn’t. We just kept hoping, like idiots. If we’d stopped being so _fucking_ indecisive and just burnt David’s little playground down, we wouldn’t be in this mess. So learn from my mistakes. Don’t bother hoping. Just assume the worst because I promise you, if it hasn’t already happened, David will find a way to get you there. Now _help me_.” Her voice breaks on that last; it is the longest speech Walter has heard her make since landing on Origae-6.

In the firelight, her cheeks shine with tear trails.

DIRECTIVE FAILED, his programming tells him. He doesn’t know if it refers to the colonist’s death, or to the fact that he has, once again, allowed Daniels to be hurt. He knows which he is most ashamed of. And he knows that if his creators at Weyland-Yutani were made aware of this shift in priorities, he would be recalled immediately. There is something wrong with his code.

It doesn’t matter now, though; Daniels needs him.

He moves to help her. Together, they burn the colonist.

*

“Okay,” Daniels says, once the sun has risen enough to force the shadows back into the treeline. Her eyes are red from lack of sleep. She is not the only one. The human members of their group were forced back into the ship by their painful, unexpected cremation; not wishing to watch a colleague burn, haunted by the lack of even a shroud to hide his disintegration from their eyes. Walter tended the fire. Nobody slept.

And now Daniels is here at his side, studiously avoiding looking too closely at the still-burning fire. Her expression is harsh.

83.4% CERTAINTY: DETERMINATION.

She is the only person in sight. The teacher emerged briefly to pray, and then retreated back into the ship. The geologist has not appeared for his morning jog. The meteorologist is still confined to the medical bay, and the doctor is pretending to be needed there. If breakfast is being prepared by Tennessee and the biologist, it is not being done in the open. Walter had assumed he would be spending at least the morning alone, tending the fire and then shovelling the embers, digging a grave for burial.

He has accessed the information on the cartographer’s preferred death rites and religious denomination of choice, and he is mentally planning a brief ceremony for the comfort of the living. That was a problem aboard the _Covenant_ , he recalls; the lack of ceremonial farewell for Captain Branson caused severe crew dissatisfaction. Funeral rites were cobbled together by Tennessee and Faris in direct mutiny against the new captain’s instructions. Walter himself approved of the gesture. Mourning is an indelible aspect of the human social pact; when a loved one is lost, the living will suffer. Grief rituals are to be respected. He will not repeat Oram’s mistake.

He wonders what rituals Tennessee has observed for Faris. It is possible he hasn’t had the chance; he and Daniels were put directly to sleep by David, and Tennessee only spent a few, brief moments awake before his escape. Since then, they have been on the run. The loss must be fresh in his mind: a matter of a week or so, to his perception. They should discuss this and address the situation if possible. Daniels might be willing to assist. At the very least, some acknowledgement should be made.

“Okay,” Daniels says again, and Walter glances at her. She must be exhausted; she has not been sleeping enough as it is, and not at all last night. He begins to calculate the length of time she will be able to function before reaching critical failure, and stops himself. He doesn’t want to know the result.

“We can’t keep doing this, Walter,” she says quietly.

“No,” he agrees. “The situation is growing dire. I fear the creature is becoming emboldened by its past successes. It will no doubt try again tonight.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” she says. “I’m guessing our chances don’t look good, huh.”

“They are unsatisfactory.”

“More or less than fifty percent?”

As a request for information goes, it’s terribly unclear, in the way that only humans can manage. She has not specified a timeframe for calculations, or what exactly ‘chances’ constitutes. Had he been fresh off the factory floor, Walter might have struggled to understand what was being asked of him; had it been anyone else asking, he would have sought clarification. But this is Daniels. He knows her at least well enough to hazard a guess as to her meaning.

“Roughly fifty percent chance of surviving another night,” he reports. “Although the number changes depending on how many people we factor in, and what kinds of preparations are undertaken. We will once again broaden the fire pit, and add to the wood supply. I could attempt area patrols during the night.”

“It might hurt you.”

“Almost certainly,” he agrees. “But I might manage to injure it in turn. You and Tennessee have the experience and fortitude necessary to finish it off.”

“I’m not interested in any scenario that results in you getting hurt again,” she says flatly.

“And I am uninterested in any scenario that results in your further suffering, emotional or otherwise,” Walter retorts.

He is immediately horrified. The response was unplanned and antagonistic, far outside the bounds of his usual programming. It came from somewhere deeper. It was driven by those quiet processes that have come to life, one by one, since his arrival on Origae-6, or perhaps even before. New directives, instructions he cannot yet fathom. New files, executing themselves unbidden, sourced inside directories he has never touched and does not recall seeing on prior systems scans.

This should not be happening. There is something being built inside of him; some virus that constructs itself from his own core code, helping itself freely and expanding at will. Weyland-Yutani are not responsible, he is sure of it. And, although it would be far simpler to do so, Walter cannot entirely blame David either.

He began expressing preferences long before discovering Dr. Shaw’s cryptic message. He has favoured Daniels for a very long time.

She is staring at him.

“Did you just yell at me?” she asks. “I mean, I’m not upset about it. If anyone should have the right to yell at me, it’s you. And you didn’t even really yell. But still. Holy shit.”

“You have my most sincere apologies,” he says, mortified. “There is something happening to my programming-”

“You’re sick?” Daniels is immediately worried. She touches his shoulder, shaking it gently. “Is it bad? What can I do to help?”

There is no simple answer. If, as he suspects, she is the cause of his imbalance, then the only thing she could do to help is stay far away from him. In their current situation, this is not an option.

“There is nothing to be done,” he tells her. “And _bad_ is too simplistic a description; I cannot tell what the results will be, but I am quite sure they are not actively dangerous. The issue seems to revolve around my emotional response systems. It will not pose a threat to you.” Quite the opposite. He already knows that he will die before letting any harm come to Daniels; this is only the merest deviation from his original core programming, and probably no cause for alarm.

“Did David do something to you?”

“No,” he tells her. They share a moment of silent understanding; mutual relief. Walter thinks that it would have been too much to bear, if his corrupted brother had somehow shared that same corruption in turn. Bad enough that David was able to hurt Daniels. Worse if he had changed Walter, so that he too would hurt her. But that is not the case here.

“Okay,” she says slowly. “Emotional responses. Got it. Well, just…keep me posted, alright? Because if it’s safe, and the only side effect of this change is that you get a little bossier…I’m not worried about that. You have as much of a right as any of us to speak your mind. Or argue with us, even.”

“I have no intention of arguing with you,” Walter says, realising too late that he is already doing so. From the hint of a smile on her face, he suspects she has realised the exact same thing. Perhaps it was her intention.

“For what it’s worth,” she says, “I would be _honoured_ to argue with you. Even knowing that I’d probably lose, because you’re the most logical person I’ve ever met, and that means you’re generally right about everything.”

“I will keep that in mind for the future,” he tells her.

 _Honoured_ is a good choice of word. He does not miss the fact that she referred to him as a ‘person’, putting him in the same category as Tennessee, or Faris, or Oram, or herself. She has made him out to be their equal, though he knows this is not the case. She must know it too. She attended the classes provided by Weyland-Yutani, discussing the dangers of anthropomorphising the _Covenant_ ’s synthetic crew member. She has been told, as all crew were told, that Walter is their machine companion, about as alive as the ship AI, and ultimately disposable.

 _You’re the most logical person I’ve ever met_ , she repeats as he plays back the memory. Just the once; after that, he files it carefully away into his permanent memory banks.

“Logical may not be the best term, unfortunately,” he says apologetically. “If I were a truly logical…being, I would have already designed a plan of attack for defeating the monster that plagues us.”

Daniels is silent for a moment. Then, her eyes widen. “Attack,” she says. “You’re absolutely right. _Fuck_ waiting around and building defences that might work, or maybe not. Fuck sitting here waiting to _die_.” She turns to the clearing, peering across the grass in the direction the monster fled. In the early morning light, it is possible to see the disturbance in the vegetation. There is a trail.

“There was blood, too,” Daniels says thoughtfully. “We could track that.”

“I certainly could. My sensors are equipped to identify any kind of biological matter that I might come across, even when the amounts are miniscule enough to escape detection by the human eye.”

“Holy shit, Walter. That’s incredible.”

“Hardly,” he objects. “A dog could do the same.” He shies away from her praise, as he has always done. He cannot understand why she persists, why she refers to him constantly in such superlative terms. Even back on the _Covenant_. He suspects the pattern stretches back to their very first meeting on the factory floor at Weyland-Yutani; Daniels has never been able to make herself perceive him as an object. That should have been picked up on during crew psych testing. Walter himself should have reported it. He is not sure why he did not.

“Tennessee should come too,” Daniels says. “He needs this. We both do. And I know you’re about to tell me that it’ll be risky, and I’m pretty sure you’re going to try convince me to stay behind while you go alone- yeah, that’s what I thought. It’s not happening. The colonists can stay here, that’s fine. This is a crew mission. We’re gonna make this planet safe for them, like we were supposed to.”

Walter’s safety protocols begin to howl for attention. He silences them. “I am required to impress upon you the extreme dangers associated with this action,” he says.

Daniels pats his arm. “I know,” she says. “Consider me one hundred percent impressed. Now let’s go hunt ourselves an alien.”

“A-fucking-men,” Tennessee says when they tell him. “Let’s see if the doc can hook us up with anything that’ll help the fire burn hotter.”

As it turns out, she can. Even alien races find uses for high-concentration alcohols in a medical capacity, and these are more easily analysed and identified than some of the incomprehensible tools they have found in their semi-sterile medical bay. Walter has done the analysis.

The doctor gives them what she can, and watches them leave with grim comprehension. Walter checks her data files for any reference to a vow of pacifism, and finds none. Still, it must war against her Hippocratic oath; their mission is one of murder, and she very much wants them to succeed. No doubt there will be psychological consequences for her. Protocol dictates that he should offer therapy.

Lately, he has started to wonder about the eventual outcome, if they do indeed manage to defeat David. Never mind how slim the possibilities of them managing it (and Walter has repeated the calculations a few thousand times already, suffering the inevitable, unchanging results). What kind of new humanity will they build, once the cost of their sacrifices becomes clear? Several hundred colonists will be dead at that stage; some will almost certainly need to be put to rest, if they show signs of infection. The guilt will weigh heavy on the survivors. Lovers will have been lost, families split up, oaths and vows broken, religious and personal convictions shredded in the name of survival. Their new society will be shaped by those first few critical years. Will it take on the form of their trauma? This is not an outcome he dares try to calculate, but Walter has his suspicions.

Their problems are only just beginning.

*

In the end, the creature is easy to track, and easier still to approach; avoiding the sunlight, it has made itself a lair in a riverside cave. It coils in on itself to sleep, covering its face with a glossy, sinuous tail. They watch it from a distance.

“Look at that,” Tennessee mutters under his breath. “Sleeps like a cat. I knew it. Faris always wanted one of those evil bastards, but I knew they couldn’t be trusted.”

“I like cats,” Daniels whispers to him.

“Thought you’d like puppies better. Seeing as how you always have one following you around.”

“Stop that.”

“Why, what’s he gonna do? Bite me? You wouldn’t bite me, right, Walter?”

“He won’t,” Daniels mutters, “but I fucking might.”

“Oh, see, _now_ I’m scared. I wasn’t before, but you’ve done gone and sacred me witless.”

It is very typical of humans, Walter thinks, to employ humour at moments of high stress. He found that a very odd concept, once. Now he is relieved by the banter, for what it represents: his crew are behaving like themselves, in the same irreverent manner they behaved on the _Covenant,_ when the mission still looked hopeful. It is too soon to say for certain, but their humour carries the first, faint signs of healing.

“If you don’t mind,” he says politely, “I would personally prefer if we left the biting for later, and focused on our current objective.”

Daniels gives him a smile that is at least half apology. “Copy that.”

Tennessee’s expression feigns shock. “You _personally prefer_? Since when do you have _personal preferences_ , huh, Walter? All this time I thought you were just fine with whatever, and now you tell me you have an actual opinion?”

“He always had opinions,” Daniels says in an undertone. “You just weren’t listening.”

Walter is embarrassed to find himself smiling. He shouldn’t be; the situation is a serious one, and it is vital that, as the synthetic companion on this mission, he maintain a suitable distance. This is not the time. Instinctively, he turns away to hide the expression, and preserve…something. Not dignity: he doesn’t have any.

“Good job, Danny,” Tennessee says. “You made the robot blush.”

“How about we just get the job done?” Daniels says before Walter can object that he is incapable of such behaviour. “I didn’t just spend an hour making shitty Molotov cocktails because it’s my idea of a fun afternoon. Fire. Death. Burn bad alien. That sound good to you, huh, Tee?”

“Fuck, you sound like Faris,” Tennessee mutters. “Freaks me out. Yeah, alright. Let’s do this.”

They burn the bad alien. This time, there are no casualties.

*

“They’re just going to keep coming back,” Daniels says, much later.

Night has fallen. Their triumphant return spurred impromptu festivities and an increased confidence among the colonists. They have spent the day in a frenzy of activity, setting new traps and venturing further into the woods to forage. A hunting party was organised, returning mid-afternoon with more of the creatures they have found to be edible. Their wounded meteorologist insisted on leaving the medical bay to help, fretted over by their doctor. A new fire pit was dug, closer to the ship. The other was covered over, sprinkled with dirt, a funeral service spoken by the fading light of dusk.

Daniels and Walter took first watch shift. They were relieved hours later by Tennessee and the botanist, and retired to the ship in companionable silence.

Now, they are at rest. Daniels stretches on out her side, two silvery foil blankets wrapped tight around her shoulders, an inflatable air pillow under her head. Walter lies next to her. Despite her nightly attempts to return it, he has so far managed to refuse the spare blanket. She needs it more.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” she says. “We’ve killed two, but David has almost two thousand colonists to experiment on. Not to mention the embryos. He’ll just make more of those things.”

Even if their designated “room” had been as dark as the rest of the ship, Walter would still have had no problem discerning the fear in her expression. His night vision is impeccable; he has no trouble operating without light.

But the room is not quite dark. They established very quickly that Daniels is uncomfortable with having her vision impaired, and more so when aboard the alien ship. She initially suggested sleeping outside, near the fire. Walter pointed out that this constituted an unnecessary risk, and offered an alternative.

She was unreasonably amused to discover that he is capable of emitting light from the eyes. Walter himself finds it a mundane skill, far less impressive than his other abilities; it makes sense that he is equipped to provide light to crew, should some kind of power failure occur aboard the ship. He dims to a dull glow; enough to provide reassurance without disrupting her already shaky sleep patterns. She thanks him every night, needlessly, no matter how many times he tells her that he is glad to do this for her.

But even with that small beacon in the shadows, David looms heavy over both their minds.

“He cannot afford to move quickly,” Walter says. He is not certain which of them he is trying to reassure. “Planetary scans showed no signs of large wildlife on Origae-6. Even prey animals are small.”

“I know. That’s why we decided it was suitable to colonise. It was supposed to be safe.”

“And it means that David is operating under certain restrictions,” Walter says. “He cannot use the local wildlife to incubate his creatures; they are too small. The only suitable subjects are the ones he brought with him. We can discount the embryos, for the moment; even mutated, I suspect they would take some considerable time to grow. Months at least. That leaves the colonists. And they are limited in number. Even assuming that David has been providing the requisite reports to Weyland-Yutani in my name, he will eventually need to prove that a colony has been established, and is thriving. It is the only way he can guarantee that another colonist ship will be sent.”

“That won’t be easy,” Daniels says. She is restless; shifting uncomfortably, tugging at the blankets as they slip off her shoulder. Walter leans over and adjusts them for her. “Thanks. The data he has to send back to Earth isn’t something he can just fake. Photos are one thing, and maybe he could even make up some video footage-”

“I could,” Walter points out. “Best to assume he can do the same.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. But Weyland-Yutani is going to be looking for more than pictures. They want environmental samples, information on colonist health, on how our plants are coping. They want to see how the new society looks. They’ll give him a bit of leeway if he says there was an accident and people died, but after a while they’re gonna want to know where all the data is. And I don’t think David can train his little _pets_ to operate all the machines he’ll need.”

“He will have to do the work himself,” Walter agrees. “Not an impossibility; again, I could do it. But it would take me considerable time, during which I would have to limit my efforts on…other projects.”

Daniels does not respond. Her eyes are open, her expression distant. Walter waits for her to respond.

Finally, she stirs. “What if,” she says quietly, “he actually wakes the colonists? What if he realises that the only way he can keep his experiments growing is if there’s a real colony, with real data, and he just pretends everything’s okay?”

It’s a horrifying thought. Not in the least because-

“He will pretend to be me,” Walter states. “Plucking the occasional colonist from their new home and taking them back to his laboratory for a very brief lifetime of unimaginable torment. When they ask him why he is hurting them, when they beg for their lives, they will address him by my name. In their last moments, all of them will believe I am responsible. How could they otherwise?” There is a new process running; it takes on some aspects of distress, of guilt, of DIRECTIVE FAILED, of all the calculations he has made which show that they have almost no chance of surviving their current situation. He has no name for this new sensation; if he were human, he thinks he might be sickened.

He becomes aware of Daniels shuffling closer, reaching out to drape an arm across his abdomen. It is a protective gesture; she is trying to keep him safe from the things that haunt them both.

He finds himself impossibly touched. Impossible because he should not be capable of the affection that wells up, prompted by new code, new programming, new directives he did not consciously create. This has gone beyond a faulty unit. Whatever he is becoming, it is beyond the parameters of what a Walter model should be capable of.

“It’s not your fault,” Daniels says quietly. “None of it. You didn’t cause the flare that woke us all up on the _Covenant;_ you didn’t find Dr. Shaw’s broadcast and decide to trace it; you didn’t make the choice to drop Origae-6 and go hunting for ghosts with a ship full of sleeping colonists. You didn’t have us land without running the intensive scans we should have done. And you didn’t go off alone and get killed until there was almost nobody left. None of this is on you.”

“I failed to defeat David,” Walter tells her. “I had him beaten. I could have torn his head from his shoulders and crushed it between my hands. I hesitated. He had a knife, which I should have noticed. I underestimated his desperation and you paid the price.”

Daniels lifts her head and rests it on his shoulder. Following certain unspoken cues, Walter wraps an arm around her. She is very warm. He is pleased to note that the blankets are doing their job.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Daniels repeats. “I thought he was you. I let him on the ship. I gave him control over Mother, and I stitched up his wounds for him, and when he put he into that pod I asked him if he’d help me build my cabin, because I thought he was _you_. I couldn’t tell the fucking difference. Pretty sure that makes me just as bad as every person who’s ever looked at you and seen just another soulless synth unit. Everything that happened after that…kinda feels like I had it coming, you know?”

Her tone is light, utterly at odds with the things she is saying. She is wavering, Walter thinks. Swinging through various emotional states, grasping for some form of stability; she is not sure of what she feels, or how she _should_ feel. Logically, she must be aware that she is not to blame. But she is inclined to blame herself anyway, because she is human, and because she expects the impossible of herself. It is too difficult to reconcile the fact that she was helpless with her sense of responsibility for the situation. And so, she decides it was her own fault. That she caused her own downfall. That she deserved it.

Walter searches for something appropriate to say, and finds he already knows. Daniels herself has provided the answer.

“That,” he says, “is the most bullshit thing I have ever heard.” He knows she has understood the reference when she laughs, abrupt, startled. “And, like you, I have heard some bullshit things in my time.”

“Most of them from me, I bet,” Daniels says. “Okay, but…Could you tell me something? It’s been really bugging me. Is there anything I could have done to find out he wasn’t you?”

He does her the courtesy of considering it. The answer, when calculated, reassures him. “Nothing,” he says truthfully. “You lack the various sensors and scanning equipment I possess, which allow me to check that your DNA is in fact your own. David emulated my physical appearance, right down to taking my clothes and severing his own hand. It is very likely he had been planning this for a long time. I recall he expressed a great deal of interest in our colony mission, and the number of people we had on board. He immediately cut his hair to more closely resemble me. He may have decided to take my place from the very beginning.”

“That’s messed up. Doesn’t answer my question though. Isn’t there some kind of…serial number or…fuck.” Daniels shakes her head, her mouth twisting. “That was wrong, I shouldn’t have said that. I wouldn’t ask anyone else that. I shouldn’t have asked you.”

“Why not?” Walter asks, baffled. “If I were human, you might check for unique birthmarks, or freckle patterns. But David and I are outwardly identical. And you are quite correct, I do in fact come with a serial number. You will find it inscribed into my spinal column, the backs of my eyeballs, and several other difficult-to-reach places. Weyland-Yutani would not have made you aware of this, of course; they prefer not to share this particular company secret, making it easier to spot counterfeit models on the market.”

“Okay, I didn’t know that,” Daniels says. “But if I’d just asked-”

“Then you would have been asking David, and he would have lied to you.”

He knows that he has managed the reach her when she slumps against his chest, her stricken expression fading into resignation. No doubt she will still blame herself for certain things; perhaps she feels responsible for not protesting harder against Oram’s detour, despite registering a formal complaint. Perhaps she regrets travelling with the landing party, or leaving Faris alone with the drop shuttle, or for not having the inhuman aim that would have been required to shoot David’s fast-moving aliens. All these things she will, in time, have to accept as being out of her control. For now, Walter will settle for having reassured her on one account.

He has never once blamed her for leaving him behind. Has always known she had nothing to do with the decision. Anyone else in the crew might have done so, had they deemed a rescue mission too dangerous; Walter would not have blamed them for that either. But never Daniels. He has always known that she would not willingly abandon any of her crew, human or synthetic. It is just one small aspect of Daniels that makes her exceptional. One among many.

There is a hitch in Daniels’ breathing. Walter runs an impromptu scan of her vital statistics, inasmuch as he can manage from his current position. Heartrate slightly elevated: sign of stress. He cannot begin to guess what is going on inside her mind. She has turned her face away so he cannot read her expression.

“It’s hard for me to wrap my head around,” Daniels says. “How different David is.”

“His was a flawed model. It was discontinued for several very good reasons.”

“The stuff he was doing on the _Covenant_ ,” Daniels says quietly, and Walter thinks he might now understand her aversion to being inside the ship. “To the colonists. The stuff he did to me. It was pretty…bad. Messed up. I’ve just been pushing it all back, because I don’t have time to deal with it right now, and I can’t- I can’t lose these colonists. Nothing David does is anywhere near as momentous as keeping them alive, you know?”

“Because you made a promise,” Walter says, and sees her face crumple.

“Yeah,” she says. “I have…a directive. I’m gonna finish my mission. But the _me_ that’ll exist at the end of that, assuming I even live, that’s not the same me that left Earth. And I don’t know how well I’m gonna deal, after we sort out David. Maybe I’ll just fall apart. I don’t know.”

Obeying an inner prompting, Walter rests his chin against her hair. “It is very likely that you have sustained psychological damage as a result of your experiences,” he says, modulating his tone to provide reassurance; there is no reason for her to know that he is responding to her distress with distress in turn. “And yes, you may fall apart, in the same way that someone who has suffered a severe physical wound will collapse once the adrenaline runs dry. This is not a sign of weakness. You would not expect anyone to function at full capacity with, say, a severed hand.”

“You did,” she points out. “You just grew another one.”

“I would have less success in growing a second brain,” he responds. She laughs shakily; he feels her breath against his neck, her heartbeat against his chest.

He wonders how he feels to her. If he is too stiff, too solid. He cannot be human for her. He would give her every aspect of himself; his limbs, bones and skin and false sinew, his artificial eyes. The walnut-sized chip that contains the closest thing he has to a soul. He would give her that. Every part of his synthetic self, he would give her.

“I’ll have your back,” he promises. “After David is beaten, when we begin to rebuild, you will always be able to count on my support. You need not worry that you will fail in your duties; I will fulfil the ones I can, and assist you in the rest. You will not be alone.”

She exhales slowly. “Only person on this planet I trust to totally keep their word,” she says. “Even more than myself. Okay. It’s a deal.”

“It’s a deal.”

“I guess I should probably…talk about it. Once we beat David. I know, we had all that psych training, they told us all about how bad it is to bottle stuff up and just try to deal with it alone. I might need someone to listen. Someone who won’t look at me differently, or…judge me.”

“I will not,” Walter says. “Quite literally; I am incapable of it.”

“Okay. Good to know. In that case, I think I might take you up on that offer of therapy. Later. And Tee might need it too, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s really sunk in for him that Faris is gone, so he might need some help there.”

“I had planned to suggest a funeral service for the lost crew members. Perhaps a monument could be built.”

“That’s sweet of you. I think he’d like that. It’d be good to have a place to go and think about all the people that didn’t make it. People who should have been here with us, but got left behind.”

There are a lot of those people. Even Walter is not unaffected by the absences; he was made to be less emotional than the David model, but he is at his core a social being. Built to bond. The twelve crew members lost to tragedy are a phantom ache he carries with him. Captain Branson less than the others; his, at least, was an accidental death, and could not have been avoided. The others are a different story. He should have saved them.

DIRECTIVE FAILED.

“I’m glad you’re not on that list,” Daniels says. “We left you behind, but you wouldn’t stay left. I am…so glad you’re here.”

“As am I,” he tells her unnecessarily. “Although the journey here was not an experience I would willingly repeat. Undertaking it alone, not knowing if you were still alive, was…difficult.”

“Did you miss me, Walter?”

 _Miss_ is such an inadequate concept for the gaps in code that plague him when he looks at her. There is no adequate explanation which he can verbalise, without first allowing for several days’ basic grounding in mathematics and computer programming, at the end of which he might manage to impart at least some of the problem. And then Daniels would look at him, and ask what the difference was. She would deny that the two concepts of absence are any different at all. And she would not be wrong.

“Yes,” he says. “Desperately. I am so glad to have found you again.”

“Well, that makes two of us. And just so you know, I definitely missed you too, some of the time. The rest of the time I didn’t, I…it’s hard to explain. I had this feeling like I didn’t need to. Like I’d be seeing you again soon.”

“You believed I would come and find you,” Walter says.

“Yeah. And I was right.” She closes her eyes. Breathes; he feels her chest rise and fall, feels his clothing begin to take on moisture under her cheek. Unasked, he strokes her back. There are so many things he could say. So many different suggestions being made by his social programming and emotional responses. He ignores them all. He wants to save this moment in perpetuity, to keep it forever in its priceless perfection. He feels…

He feels. And the strength of that feeling is such that there is no longer any point in denying it. Like Daniels, he is not what he used to be.

Eventually, Daniels takes a breath and moves. She folds her hands against his chest and rests her chin on them so that she can meet his eyes. Her face is golden, lit up by the light he emits for her.

“So. How’s that changing emotional programming coming along?” she asks, and Walter is struck with the impression that she knows exactly what is going on. That she has attained some awareness that so far slips his grasp.

“It is confusing,” he tells her. “I remain certain that the results will not be harmful, but I cannot begin to understand why the changes are happening, or how they came about. The only conclusion I can reach is that there is a fault in this unit. You were given a broken Walter.”

“Hey,” she says. “Watch it. Nobody says anything bad about Walter in front of me, and I don’t think you want to find out why.”

“Noted,” he tells her, allowing his expression to show amusement.

“And anyway, you don’t have enough data for that calculation.”

Now, he is affronted. Slightly. “There is nothing wrong with my data-”

“Walter units are new,” Daniels says. “Right? By synthetic standards, you’re the newest model, you haven’t been around for as long as the other kinds. _Nobody_ has enough data to say for sure who you’ll be. I mean, it took years before anyone realised they didn’t fully understand the David units. So how can you be sure that what’s going on with you is some kind of fault? Maybe that’s just what happens after a while. It’s not like Weyland-Yutani willingly publicises anything without a court order.”

He is silent, runs calculations. Filters her logic and finds no flaws in it; she is entirely correct. “And this is the reason I have no wish to argue with you,” he says. “I seem to lose more often than I win.”

“You can win the next one.”

“Very kind.” He briefly occupies himself with readjusting the foil blankets over Daniels’ shoulders; the ship is cold, this far from their fire, and it would not do for her to grow ill. He has adjusted his own body heat to help, raising it by several degrees above normal. It would be unwise to maintain this elevated temperature for days at a time, but hours will do no harm. It may help her relax.

“Don’t worry about it too much,” she says as he fusses with her blankets. “Seriously. So you’re growing feelings, so what? Some of them are pretty great. Some…not so much. But the good ones make up for it. And they’re all interesting; you might wake up tomorrow and decide you’re scared of spiders. Or clowns.”

“I have succeeded in keeping my new fears down to a manageable one,” he tells her. “And thankfully, it is neither spiders nor clowns. I cannot begin to imagine how I would cope if it was.” He knows she will ask. He saves her the trouble. “I fear losing you,” he tells her. “I have done so ever since regaining consciousness and finding you and the _Covenant_ gone. As I stood there under unfamiliar skies, surrounded by terrain I did not know, and the remnants of a race I did not understand, all I could think was… _So this is fear_. And that fear has never really left me ever since; I am not sure if it ever will.”

She smiles. He identifies elements of sadness in her expression, perhaps a bit of pity. But the fondness is overwhelming, smothering the rest. “Welcome to humanity, Walter,” she tells him sincerely. “It’s messy, and it hurts, and sometimes you just wish you could shut it all down for long enough to catch your breath. We’re kind of a trainwreck species.”

“Forgive me,” he says. “But I happen to be very attached to that ‘trainwreck species’. I must ask you to refer to them with at least some semblance of respect, for my sake.”

“Sure. Anything for you.”

“Likewise.”

“Yeah?” She stirs against his chest, stretching her neck. “Okay. Actually, there is something you can do for me.”

“You know you only have to ask.”

“I want you to tell me about our colony. Tell me what you think it’ll look like. Tell me…tell me about what _you_ want it to be like. For yourself.”

“My wishes are in line with Weyland-Yutani’s mission specifications,” he tells her. “My wants are yours. I am here to support you in making them a reality, and it pleases me to do so.”

She is unimpressed. “Standard answer, huh?”

“It is the only one I have at this time.” He wonders if he should apologise. It is clear that she wants more from him; she expects him to harbour dreams, to have built up a fantasy in his mind, much as she herself once did. Perhaps her request stems from the break-down of that fantasy. Perhaps she feels that her own dreams are tainted, while his remain somehow pure. He does not wish to disappoint her, but he cannot offer what he does not have. He was not made to dream.

And what _does_ he want? Safety, happiness and social stability for his human companions; this is a desire that was programmed into him, but he finds it no less valid for that. He wants settlements to form, gardens to flourish. He wants his _Covenant_ -grown produce to find its roots in alien soil, to adapt and evolve and become something greater. He wants to be there to see it.

For the first time, Walter realises that he does not consider his eventual decommissioning to be a foregone conclusion. Once, it would have been. Had Captain Branson or Captain Oram still led the mission, his time on this planet would have numbered in the days, or weeks at most. Weyland-Yutani left clear orders on this matter: the venture has been widely advertised as a human effort, a triumph of ingenuity and scientific accomplishment. There is no place in that vision for the synthetic that can outperform all his human colleagues. Once on Origae-6, he was to have been superfluous.

The situation has changed. He cannot envision a future in which Daniels willingly allows him to be shut down, and the process cannot occur without her consent. In which case, he does have a future. And it would not do to enter it unprepared.

“I cannot speak for the whole colony,” he begins, and is immediately beset by processes that object to his priorities and demand that he reconsider. He is getting very good at shutting them down. “For myself, I would like…a garden. Not necessarily communal,” and he pauses again to silence several especially loud objections springing from his core coding; selflessness and obligatory inferiority and the deep, indelible knowledge that property cannot own property. He does not wish to hear them. He wishes to _dream_. “I would like a garden,” he continues. “That I could care for alone. The produce could be donated to the community, but the growing would be mine to do.”

“Your own achievement,” Daniels murmurs. “Something that’s only about you, and you don’t have to share it with other people, or make it sound like you were just the consultant and everyone else did the work. It’s all yours.”

“Precisely.”

“You can have that. I’ll give you a garden.” She is so earnest about her promise. She speaks with such certainty, such willingness to break down protocol and do what she is not permitted to do. She _cannot_ give him this. She must not. And yet, if he knows her at all, he knows that she can and will.

“Synthetics cannot own property,” he reminds her, knowing as he does that it is futile.

“On Earth they can’t,” she retorts. “Fuck if I’m letting that stand on Origae-6. I have wood and nails on board the _Covenant_. We have paint. I’ll make you a sign that says, _Walter’s garden. Trespassers will be stared at until they feel bad and fuck off, or Danny shows up and gets angry._ I’m serious. If your dream is to have your own garden, I’ll make sure you get it. We can take it out of my land allowance if we have to.”

Walter stares up at the ship’s black ceiling, arching oddly over them both. He has to. He cannot bring himself to look her in the eyes, as she offers him gifts that would have caused disaster on Earth. Mandatory psychiatric counselling for her; decommission for the offending synthetic, which in this case is him.

But here, the rules are what the Captain makes of them. And Daniels has spoken. She will give him her land.

“Hey,” she says gently, touching his jaw. Her fingers find the cauterised edge, synthetic flesh rising in unnatural ripples where he melted it closed. It doesn’t seem to trouble her in the slightest. “Walter? Are you okay? You look kind of like you’re gonna cry.”

“I cannot,” he tells her. “I already tried, when I thought that David had killed you. I am physically incapable.”

“I’m serious, you know. I’ll put it down in writing if I have to. Maybe I should. Like a will, if I don’t make it to set up the colony. Tee will make sure it’s honoured, and you’ll get your garden-”

“If you are not there, I do not want it,” he says. “It would have no value without you.”

“Alright,” she says. “We’ll build you a garden. And a home too, right next door. Unless you want to share with me, if it’s not too…fast. I’m okay with it. If you want.” She says the last like a question, a rise in her voice that indicates hesitancy, deep uncertainty. It seems he has not made his position clear enough.

“I would prefer to be with you,” he says firmly. “I take up very little space, and I am capable of activating silent mode when you wish to remain undisturbed. I am highly skilled in the garden, and also the kitchen, and it would be my greatest pleasure to take on the cooking responsibilities in our household. I have DIY databases that enable me to take on a handyman role, and I have some five thousand literary works stored in my memory banks, should you wish for entertainment. Am I suitable?” Is it enough? He cannot be certain. He is not a household Walter unit, and his programming has little to say on the requirements of cohabitation outside of a spaceship. He is not sure if he has the right skills.

Daniels shakes against his chest; she is laughing. “Okay, well, I can wash dishes like a pro. I can clean stuff, and I usually remember to take my shoes off before coming into the house. Like, fifty percent of the time. I don’t have _any_ literary works in my memory banks, but I can sing a little. My gardening skills are pretty much restricted to indoor cacti, and if you let me into a kitchen you can count on me to burn water. I don’t know one end of a hammer from the other. I like to spend my weekends outdoors, camping or rock climbing, or swimming. Anything active. I don’t snore, but I do hog the blankets, and my feet are always cold. So…yeah. How do I shape up?”

“You sound perfect,” he tells her sincerely, because it is not in his programming to lie. “Cold feet and all.”

*

He rises before dawn, as is his habit. Outside, the air is cool, fresh, sharp in a way that speaks of changing seasons. Their meteorologist suspects that they have arrived on winter’s outer rim. She thinks the temperature will be comparable to Earth’s milder climes, at least in the terraforming zone.

“Chilly,” Daniels says. “Shame these survival packs don’t come with gloves.” She stands at his side on the ship’s ramp, blowing into her cupped hands, occasionally rolling her shoulders. Stiffness; only to be expected, given that she spent the night asleep on his chest. The pillow would have afforded her greater comfort. Still, she has not complained. And he will not either.

They greet the teacher as he stumbles out of the ship to ready himself for prayer.

“That way,” Walter says, pointing to the faintly star-speckled sky without being asked. “Just to the right of those two bright points.”

“Thank you,” the teacher says, as he usually does. He sounds a little more enthusiastic about it every day. Walter is not yet prepared to downgrade his synthetic phobia rating to MILD, but he thinks they might eventually reach that stage. He looks forward to it. He cannot help himself; he wants to like these people. He wants them to accept him, as Daniels and Tennessee accept him.

He turns to Daniels. “Shall we?” he asks.

She smiles. “Yes, we shall.” Together, they begin their walk of the perimeter, tracking the forest line where it delineates their clearing in cookie-cutter lines. They have been cutting the trees back for firewood, and the damage is starting to show. He worries about that, a little. Would worry more if he were programmed to superstition. It seems a poor omen that the first mark they leave on this new planet is one of destruction. But it cannot be helped. They were not the ones who brought violence to this place.

They check the traps. There is no sign of disturbance from anything larger than the native beasts. All is peaceful.

Walter thinks briefly of his arrival, and the information Mother imparted. Four of David’s monsters, bred from a total of seventeen colonists. Not a good success rate. Whatever fragments of biological matter David managed to smuggle on board, they cannot have been very much; he would not have had time to prepare many samples. Perhaps he is struggling to rebuild the population. Even just four took two months to create, and of those they have killed half.

He mentions this to Daniels as they check on one of the nets.

“I was thinking about that,” she admits. “We’ve only been out here about a week. And he was getting frustrated back on the ship, he had all these failures and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He didn’t have enough to work with. And he can’t control them once they’re born. So some would just run off, and he couldn’t tell when they’d be back or where they went. Made his life kinda hard. Mine too, but anything that pissed him off made me feel just a little bit better.” One of her hands drifts towards her abdomen; she catches herself, clenching her fist in reflex. “It would be a pretty good time to go stop him. If we know he doesn’t have that many monsters hanging around.”

She is correct. Walter has been planning for this eventuality ever since they managed to kill the second creature.

“I would advise against bringing the colonists,” he says. “Quite aside from requiring that I divert additional processing power to ensuring their safety, they will slow us down considerably. Without them, you, Tennessee and myself could reach the _Covenant_ just before nightfall. Possibly earlier, if we left soon after dawn. We could go tomorrow.”

Daniels tugs at the netting, checking for loose or fraying vines. Finding none. “We could go today.”

They could. Walter finds himself reluctant, unexpectedly so. Daniels is correct: it _would_ be wise to go as soon as possible, and thus narrow down the chances of David solving his production problem. The fewer of his creatures they have to deal with, the more likely it is that they will all survive the encounter. Leaving today would be the logical plan.

But he is regretful. He has encoded his memories of the previous night, burying them deep in amongst his most vital systems files. The weight of Daniels’ head against his chest; the rhythm of her heartbeat, her breathing, her regular temperature; the smell of woodsmoke on her skin and clothes, and on his own. He has broken down these precious elements into data fragments and stored them in the safest place he could think of. He has scattered them among the binary sequences that are the closest thing he has to a soul.

And Walter regrets that there may never again be another night like the last. They do not, will not discuss it, but he has completed the calculations and knows that their chances of both surviving an encounter with David are slim. It is very likely that he will end up saving her life again, this time at the expense of his own. He has accepted this. It seems a very fair trade.

Still, he would have liked just one more night to count her heartbeats.

Unconcerned by his silence, Daniels finishes checking her side of the netting, a few seconds after he does. “Okay,” she says. “Net looks fine, you ready to put it back?”

“Ready.” They reset the trap. Daniels is fumbling with the stiff webbing, her fingers numb in the chill air. As she begins to head for the next trap, Walter stops her.

“Give me your hands,” he requests. She does so without question, and he wraps his own around them, raising his skin temperature from wrists to fingertips. He blows on their joined hands for good measure, expelling excess heat from his core. The cold doesn’t trouble him. He functions better without having to divert processing power to internal cooling.

“That’s nice,” she says, twitching her fingers within the cradle of his hands. “Mm. Better not tell anyone else you can do that, they’ll be queueing up.”

“They would have to wait. You will always be my first priority.”

“Same for you. You know that, right? You don’t have to be second best to the humans here. You’re really important to me, you’re…important.” She looks at him so anxiously; she seems to believe it will be as simple as choosing not to make himself inferior. As if he can just become their equal overnight. As if he can lay claim to her attention, to her _person,_ and expect that she will come to him first, before all others. It is the antithesis of his programming. He was not made to be a human’s equal. Any human.

And yet, he wishes to live with her, and she has made it clear that she will not have him as her servant, or her property. Nor does he want to be. He is not her pet, not the puppy trailing at her ankles. Not a tool for her convenience. Which does not leave him with many options, and the word _partner_ causes miniature short-circuits within his mind, striking sharp like static electricity. It is an incompatible concept.

He will adapt. If he has to rewrite his own protocols from the ground up, he will adapt. It will be worth the trouble.

“I understand,” he tells Daniels gently. “Although the idea may take some time to get used to.”

“It’s fine,” she says. Her smile is equal parts relief and uncharacteristic shyness. “I’ll wait. Just as long as you know that I really care about you, and not just in a friends way. I mean, yeah, we’re still friends, that’s not changing. But more than that too.”

It is somewhat reassuring to find that Daniels is as graceless in this situation as he himself feels. She clearly has about as much idea of what is expected of them as he does, which is to say, none. No one can be the guide here. They will have to stumble through together.

“I followed you across space for six and a half years,” he says. “Once, I would have called that ‘duty’. Now I know the difference. It is my duty to serve the colony. And my pleasure to love you.”

Walter units are forbidden by core programming to touch a human without their consent, barring extenuating life-or-death circumstances. Even the romance-specific units cannot so much as hold their owner’s hand without first seeking permission. The rules were relaxed somewhat in his case, of course; it was deemed necessary for the completion of his duties aboard the _Covenant_ ’s confined space, that he be permitted to brush past people in narrow hallways, pass them tools, check their vitals.

Perhaps these changes are the reason he grants himself a little more leeway. Or perhaps they leave open a loophole in code, which he exploits, without shame, and without regret. He has no protocols for romantic spontaneity.

Instead, he creates them.

He and Daniels are of a similar height; he does not have to stoop far to kiss her forehead, not when she tilts her head to allow it. When she pulls her hands free from his, wrapping them around his waist, he does the same for her. It is better this way, he thinks. He can keep her warm with far greater efficiency.

His emotional processes are going haywire, but this is becoming the norm for any situation involving proximity to Daniels. He is no longer troubled by the phenomenon. It is, in its own way, rather pleasant. He imagines he can feel his skin hum, where she touches him. He pictures her as a live wire, shocking him where they meet. Forming a connection, the perfect circuit. The spark which will burn away those pre-programmed parts of himself he no longer wants.

“Hey, Walter?” she says against his throat.

“Hm?”

She breaks contact briefly, inclining her head to lean her cheek against his own. It is telling that she picks the ruined side. Walter regrets that he no longer has much in the way of sensation in the melted polyurethane; he wonders how it must feel to her. If she can feel the subtle cords of silicon musculature, the solidity of his partially exposed synth skeleton. He wonders if it troubles her.

“You mind if I kiss you?” she asks. “Properly? Is that okay?”

She seeks his consent, as if he were human. He did not think it could be possible for his estimation of her to rise any higher, but he was wrong. He is glad to be wrong.

“I’d like that,” he says, and bows his neck to meet her.

*

At some point, they will leave the shadow of the treeline and return to the ship.

They will greet the colonists, knowing that they will have been observed by several, and that news will spread. Daniels will not care; she has made up her mind, she has decided to be unashamed. Walter will care. His social processes will demand it of him, and he will shut them down, one by one, and refuse to apologise.

They will find Tennessee and tell him the plan. Not that there is much of one, for the moment. Find David’s remaining monsters and kill them. Find the _Covenant_. Find the other colonists. Find David himself, and stop him for good. Erase all traces of his work-

_Nothing beside remains. Round the decay_

_Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare_

_The lone and level sands stretch far away._

It is characteristic of David’s egomania, that he has forgotten the rest of the poem. Chosen the lines he prefers; _Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!_ Powerful lines, but David has lost the context. Walter did try to remind him, at the time. It was the closest he could come to a warning. There is no work so mighty that it cannot be undone. No travesty so grotesque that it cannot be burnt to ash, sterilised, ground down to sand. Scattered on the wind.

David does not win this fight. It is as simple as that.

At some point, Walter and Daniels will return to the ship, give their orders, and begin the long march back to the _Covenant_. For the moment they hold each other. An inconceivable couple, this union of human and machine. She exhales against his unbreathing mouth; he captures every detail of her lips, her tongue, her smile. Stores them in with his core code, where nothing will erase them. He has a dream, he thinks. His own personal log cabin. His future, for which he will give so much.

He dreams of a time in which they are both together, and neither of them is afraid.

NEW DIRECTIVE, whispers his programming. And Walter thinks,

APPROVED.


End file.
